

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 











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Peck’s Bad Boy Abroad. 





























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Peck's Bad Boy 
Abroad 


by 

HON. GEO. W. PECK 

Author of Peck's Pad c Boy and His Pa, Peck's Uncle Ike, 
How ‘Private Peck Put Down the ‘Rebellion, &c. 


Being a Humorous Description of the Bad Boy and His Dad in Their 
Journeys Through Foreign Lands, Their Visits to Crowned 
Heads, the Manners and Customs of the People, and 
the Bad Boy's Never Ending Efforts to Pro- 
vide Fun No Matter Where He Is* 


Jt, Profusely Illustrated by jt 

E. S. Groesbeck and R. W. Taylor 


V 


LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
fwo Sopieis rlacwvcp 

wtAY 18 lyu^" 

OopYfigni ciiiry 

TTUni/'tfof 

CLASS {j CL XXc. No; 

//S 4 rf 7 


COPY B. 


4 



Copyright , IQ04 
BY 

JOSEPH B. BOWLES 


Copyright, IQ05 
BY 

JOSEPH B. BOWLES 


Copyright , IQ05 

BY 

THOMPSON & THOMAS 


Copyright in Great B?'itain 


All Riyhis Reserved. 


r 1 
((( 



CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER I. 

The Bad Boy and His Chum Call on the Old Groceryman 
After Being Away at School — The Bad Boy’s Dad in a 
Bad Way 17 

CHAPTER II. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Ready for Their Travels — The 
Bad Boy Labels the Old Man’s Suit Case — How the Cow- 
boys Made Him Dance Once 29 

CHAPTER III. 

The Bad Boy Writes About the Fun They Had Going to 
Washington — He and His Dad Call on President Roose- 
velt — The Bad Boy Meets One of the Children and They 
Disagree 39 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Visit Mount Vernon — Dad 
Weeps at the Grave of the Father of Our Country 49 

CHAPTER V. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Have Dinner at the Waldorf- 
Astoria — The Bad Boy Orders Dinner — The Old Man 
Gets Stuck — Tries to Rescue a Countess in Distress 61 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Bad Boy Writes the Old Groceryman About Ocean Voy- 
ages — His Dad Has an Argument Over a Steamer Chair. 73 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER VII. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Eat Fog — Call on Astor — A 
Dynamite Outrage 85 


CHAPTER VIII. 

The Bad Boy Writes About the Craze for Gin in the White- 
chapel District — He Gives His Dad a Scare in the Tower 
of London 96 


CHAPTER IX. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Call on King Edward and Almost 
Settle the Irish Question 108 

CHAPTER X. 

The Bad Boy Writes of Ancient and Modern Highwaymen — 
They Get a Taste of High Life in London and Dad Tells 
the Story of the Picklemaker’s Daughter 121 

CHAPTER XI. 

The Bad Boy Writes About Paris — Tells About the Trip 
Across the English Channel — Dad Feeds a Dog and Gets 
Arrested 133 

CHAPTER XII. 

The Bad Boy’s Second Letter from Paris — Dad Poses as a 
Mormon Bishop and Has to Be Rescued — They Climb 
the Eiffel Tower and the Old Man Gets Converted 146 

CHAPTER XIII. 

The Bad Boy’s Dad and a Man from Dakota Frame Up a 
Scheme to Break the Bank, But They Go Broke — The 
Party in Trouble 157 

CHAPTER XIV. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Have an Automobile Ride — They 
Run Over a Peasant — Climb “ Glaziers ” — Dad Falls Over 
a Precipice, But Is Rescued by the Guides After a Hard 
Time of It 169 


6 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER XV. 

Dad Plays He Is an Anarchist — They Give Alms to the Beg- 
gars and the Bad Boy Ducks a Gondolier and His Dad in 
the Grand Canal 181 


CHAPTER XVI. 

The Bad Boy Writes from TMaples — Dad Sees Vesuvius and 
Calls the Servants to Put Out the Fire — They Have 
Trouble with a “Dago” in Pompeii 193 

CHAPTER XVII. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Climb Vesuvius — A Chicago Lady 
Joins the Party and Causes Trouble 205 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

The Bad Boy Makes Friends with Some Italian Children — 
Dad is Chased by Lions from the Coliseum — “ Not Any 
More Rome for Papa,” says Dad 217 

CHAPTER XIX. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Visit the Pope — They Bow to 
the King of Italy and His Nine Spots — Dad Finds That 
“The Catacombs” Is Not a Comic Opera 229 

CHAPTER XX. 

The Bad Boy Tells About the Land of the Czar and the 
Trouble They Had to Get There — Dad Does a Stunt and 
Mixes It Up with the People and Soldiers 240 

CHAPTER XXL 

Dad Sees a Russian Revolution and Faints — The Bad Boy 
Arranges a Wolf Hunt — Dad Threatens to Throw the 
Boy to the Wolves 252 

CHAPTER XXII. 

Dad Wears His Masonic Fez in Constantinople — They Find 
the Turks Sensitive on the Dog Question — A College 
Yell for the Sultan Sends Him Into a Fit 264 


7 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Meet the Cream of the Harem — 

“ Little Egypt ” Does a Dancing Stunt — The Sultan 
Wants to Send Fifty Wives to the President 276 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Arrive in Cairo — At the Hotel 
They Meet Some Egyptian Princesses — Dad Rides a 
Camel to the Pyramids and Meets with Difficulties 290 

CHAPTER XXV. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Climb the Pyramids — The Bad 
Boy Lights a Cannon Cracker in Rameses’ Tomb — They 

Flee from Egypt in Disguise 302 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

The Bad Boy Writes About Gibraltar — The Irish-English 
Army — How He Would Take the Fortress — Dad Wants 

to Buy the “Rock” 314 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

The Bad Boy Writes of Spain — They call On the King and 
the Bad Boy Is At It Once More — They See a Bull 

Fight and Dad Does a Turn 325 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad at Berlin — They Call On Emperor 
William and His Family and the Bad Boy Plays a Joke 

on Them All 340 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

The Bad Boy Writes from Brussels — He and Dad See the 
Field of Waterloo and Call on King Leopold, and Dad 
and the King Go in for a Swim — The Bad Boy, a Dog 

and Some Goats Do the Rest 354 

CHAPTER XXX. 

The Bad Boy’s Delayed Letter About Holland and Cuba — 
Dad and the Boy Go for a Drive in a Dog-Cart — They 
Have a Great Time — Land in Cuba and See the Island 
We Fought For 368 


8 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

The Bad Boy Calls on the Old Groceryman and Gets Ac- 
quainted with His New Dog — Off Again to See America. .380 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

The Bad Boy Relates the Automobile Ride He and Dad 
Took — They Sneak Out of Town 391 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

The Bad Boy Writes His Chum Not to Get so Gay — Dad’s 
Experience with the Peccaries 404 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Have Trouble with a New Break- 
fact Food — Dad Rides a Bucking Broncho 416 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Return from Texas — The Boy 
Tells the Groceryman About the Excitement at San 
Antonio 428 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

The Bad Boy's Joke with a Stuffed Rattlesnake — He Tells 
the Old Groceryman About His Dad’s Morbid Appetite. .438 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 

The Bad Boy Tells the Story of the Bears in Yellowstone 
Park and How Brave Dad Was 449 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

The Bad Boy and the Groceryman Illustrate the Russia- 
Japane'se War — The Bad Boy Tells About Dad’s Efforts 
to Raise Hair by the “Sunshine” Method 400 


9 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 


“Don’t shoot! gentlemen, please” IQ 

Believes the doctors left a monkey wrench in him 25 

Went out just ahead of the old man’s shoe 27 

Labeled his Dad’s valise 3 1 

“ He began to dance all around the platform ” 37 

“ I thought I would bust when Dad fished out a nickel and 

gave it to the porter” 4 1 

The President began to curl up his lip and show his teeth. ... 45 

“I was starting to give him a swift punch” 47 

“ You couldn’t look through that fence at what remains of 
the Father of His Country without thinking good things ”..50 

“I slipped it down the back of Dad’s pants” 57 

“The waiter brought Dad the check” 63 

Wanted Dad to cash a check because the bank was closed. ... 67 
And then the night-watchman came in with the house police- 
man and choked Dad off 71 

“I’m sorry about Dad, cause he holds more than I do, and 

he is slow about giving up meals he paid for” 74 

“ Started in to make a speech, thanking his fellow-country- 
men for coming to see him off” 78 

Dad got on his knees and said : “Now I lay me ” 94 

“Do you mean to tell me you stood around and let Richard 

kill those princes?” 98 

The Beef- Eaters’ Stampede 105 

“Everyone in Oshkosh said was out of sight and was good 

enough for any King” 109 

Dad and King Edward settling the Irish Question 113 

Dad sang “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” and the King sang 

“God Save the King” 117 

“Went over backwards and struck on his pants” 119 

Call again, Mr. Duval; always glad to serve any of the de- 
scendants of the heroes 124 

A policeman fished Dad out of the ditch 126 


10 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Dad drove the Dukes out 131 

Looked at Dad in a tone of voice that meant trouble 134 

And now he coughs up a tip every time he sees a servant look 

at him 139 

“Don’t cry, dear; I won’t hurt the little runt” 141 

The waiter was waiting for his money, and Dad tried to ex- 
plain he had been buncoed 144 

I put a big red badge on Dad’s breast with the word “ Bishop ” 

on it 149 

Dad was a sight when we found him in jail 151 

Dad went up to her, took out a five-dollar bill, and put it in 

the tambourine of the lassie .* 155 

Dad and the man from Dakota going to break the Bank 158 

“ Began to dance like they had seen the people dance at the 

show where they had passed the evening” 160 

There was to be some fun besides the winning of money, be- 
cause they talked of going out in the park and on the 
terraces — and seeing the poor devils who had gone broke 

commit suicide 162 

He would reach out to Dad for more money, and Dad would 

reach into another pocket and dig up another roll 167 

Started in on a Democratic speech 171 

Dad got down on his knees 174 

Dad dropped about a hundred feet with the rope on him.... 177 

Dad and the Anarchists reveled till almost morning 182 

“ Dad coughed up over $40 the first day, j ust giving to 

beggars” 185 

One yell in the English language, and one in Eyetalian. * . . . .187 

“Then you don’t blame your little boy, do you?” 191 

Dad pointed out of the window toward Vesuvius 195 

And I threw a pail of ashes over the fence 198 

“And the man rolled Dad over and he was a sight” 202 

It was a picture to see Dad “go up Old Baldhead” 206 

And she was stroking his hair 209 

Her husband pulled a long, blue gun 212 

“Dad’s tongue was run out and he was yelling for water ”...215 


II 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


“ When I put my arm around her and kissed her on the 

pouting lips it brought on a revolution” 219 

What Dad wanted to see 222 

“ I fell and pushed Dad and he went over in the sand and 

struck his pants on a cactus” 225 

“ You’d a died to see Dad take the lead for good old Rome .227 

“I had to kiss anybody they brought to me” 230 

“Say, for awhile Dad dassent go up” 233 

Told Dad if he didn’t stay where he belonged he would 

break him up into bones and throw him on a pile 238 

Told Dad that Nicholas just doted on Americans 242 

Shaking dice for our money 245 

A Cossack rode right up to him and lashed him over the 

back 248 

Dad stood up in the sledge and looked back 257 

And piled us out on top of Dad 259 

“ My God, we are pursued by a pack of ravenous wolves, and 

there is no help for us ” 261 

When Dad put his hand on her shoulder 266 

Get out, you hounds! 270 

Another Turk took me by the ear and stretched it out 273 

The President said he must bring his folks 277 

He was just getting warmed up to “Balance to Partners .281 

Of all the stampedes you ever saw 287 

It takes nine baths to get down to American Epidermis 292 

Like a frog on a pond lily leaf 296 

Started on a stampede 299 

Wanted him to pay for the camel 304 

I was ashamed of Dad myself 307 

Dad is disguised as a shiek 31 1 

The natives look at it and keep away from the Bank 317 

Dad got up on his hind legs and sang so loud you would 

think he would split hisself 321 

He handed her a five-dollar gold piece and went out doors for 

a breath of fresh air 327 

Dad started to run for the fence 331 

The King got one piece of the cayenne pepper candy 335 


12 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Tossed him over the fence 337 

Every man smiles or laughs out loud 341 

So this is the champion Little Devil of America 345 

Dad and Emperor William stood scratching themselves 349 

Dad leaned against a lamppost and scratched his back 352 

“Began to sell Dad relics of the Battle of Waterloo” 356 

“ The King began to peel off his clothes and Dad took off 

his” 360 

“I’ll swim you a match to the other side,” said the King 363 

“When the goats began to chew the clothes I took the dog 

and went back” 366 

“More fun than I ever had outside of a circus” 370 

“ And the dog got up and grabbed a mouthful of Dad’s ample 

pants” 374 

Any woman could whip four men at the drop of the hat 376 

“Dog does kinder act as though he had something on his 

mind” 383 

“Jerusalem, but you are a sight,” said the old groceryman. .392 

Dad said, “Good shot, Hennery” 394 

“It rained bananas and the Dago came down on his head”. .397 
“ The farmer had grabbed hold of a wire sign across the 

street” 400 

“ Hennery, this attempt on your part to murder me was not 

the success you expected” 402 

“ Dad sat in the parlor with a widow until the porter had to 

tell him to cut it out” 406 

“I got a gambler to look cross at Dad” 409 

“Dad was up on a limb and the wild animals were jumping 

up to eat his shoes” 411 

“ Dad was up on a limb praying, his gun on the ground and 

his coat-tails chewed by the wild pigs” 413 

“ Hennery, I feel as though your Dad was not long for this 

world ” 4 t 8 

Dad among the Cowboys 421 

“Dad began to pose as a regular old Rough Rider” 423 

Dad on a bucking broncho 426 

“That’s a Prairie Dog from Texas” 430 

13 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


“Dad heard something at night and rose up in bed” 432 

“Dad stepped on my prarie dog and yelled murder” 434 

“We left under escort of the police” 436 

“Arrest that boy with the rattlesnake,” said the groceryman. .442 

“Each oyster was as big as a pie plate” 445 

Landed with his head in a basket of strictly fresh eggs 451 

“You ought to have seen Dad’s short legs carry him to a 

tree” 455 

“ Studied the bears for awhile and let Dad yell for the police ”458 

Come to present arms 461 

When the fireworks went off in the grocery 463 

“ Dad said if Rockefeller could raise hair by the sunshine 
method, he could” 469 


Peck’s Bad Boy Abroad. 

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PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD. 


CHAPTER I . 

The Bad Boy and His Chum Call on the Old Grocery- 
man After Being Away at School — The Bad 
Boy’s Dad in a Bad Way. 

The bad boy had been away to school, but the 
illness of his father had called him home, and for 
some weeks he had been looking about the old 
town. He had found few of his old friends. His 
father had recovered somewhat from his illness, 
and one day he met his old chum, a boy of his own 
age. The bad boy and the chum got busy at once, 
talking over the old times that tried the souls of 
the neighbors and finally the bad boy asked about 
the old groceryman, and found that the old man 
still held out at the old stand, with the same old 
stock of groceries, and they decided to call upon 
him, and surprise him. So after it began to be 
dark they entered the store, and found the old 
groceryman sitting on a cracker box by the stove, 
stroking the back of an old maltese cat that had a 
yellow streak on the back, where it had been 
singed by crawling under the red-hot stove. As 

1 7 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


the boys entered the store the cat raised its back, 
its tail became as large as a rolling pin, and the 
cat began to spit, while the old groceryman held 
up both hands and said : 

“ Don’t shoot, please, but one of you go behind 
the counter and take what there is in the cash 
drawer, while the other one can reach into my 
pistol pocket and release my pocketbook. This 
is the fifth time I have been held up this year, and 
I have got so if I am not held up about so often I 
can’t sleep nights.” 

“ O, put down your hands and straighten out 
that cat’s back,” said the bad boy, as he slapped 
the old groceryman on the back so hard his spine 
cracked like a frozen sidewalk. “ Don’t you know 
us, you old geezer? We are the only and original 
Peck’s Bad Boy and his Chum, come to life, and 
ready for business,” and the two boys danced a 
jig on the floor, covered an inch thick with the 
spilled sugar of years ago, the molasses that had 
strayed from barrel, and the general refuse of the 
dirty place, which had become as hard as asphalt. 

“ O, dear, it is worse than I thought,” said the 
old groceryman as he laughed a hysterical laugh 
through the long whiskers, and he hugged the 
boys as though he had a liking for them, notwith- 
standing the suffering they had caused him. “ By 

18 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


gosh, I thought you were nothing but common 
robbers, who just wanted my money. You are 
old friends, and can have the whole place/' and 
he poured some milk into a basin for the cat, but 



Don't shoot! gentlemen , please. 

the animal only looked at the two boys as though 
she knew them, and watched them to see what 
was coming next. 

The bad boy looked around the old grocery, 
19 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


which had not changed a particle during the time 
he had been away, the same old box of petrified 
prunes, the dried apples that could not be cut with 
a hatchet, the canned stuff on the shelves had be- 
come so old that the labels had curled up and 
fallen off, so it must have been a guess with the 
old groceryman whether he was selling a can of 
peas or tomatoes, and the old fellow standing 
there as though the world had gone off and left 
him, as his customers had. 

“ Well, wouldn’t this skin you,” said the bad 
boy, as he took up a dried prune and tried to crack 
it with a hatchet on a two-pound weight, turning 
to his chum who was stroking the singed hair of 
the old cat the wrong way. “ Say, old man, you 
ought to get a hustle on you. Why don’t you 
clean out this shebang, and put in a new stock 
of goods, and have clerks with white aprons on, 
and a girl bookkeeper, and goods that people will 
buy and eat and not get sick? There is a grocery 
down street that is as clean as a whistle, and I 
notice all your old customers go there. Why 
don’t you keep up with the times? ” 

“ O, I ain’t running a dude place,” said the 
old man, as he took a piece of soft coal and put it 
in the old round stove, and wiped the black off 
his hands on his trousers. “ I am trying to get 


20 


PECK'S BAD BOY ABROAD 


rid of my customers. I have got money enough 
to live on, and I just stay here waiting for the 
old cat to die. I have only got six customers left, 
and one of them has got pneumonia, and is going 
to die, then there will be only five. When they 
are all gone I shall sit here by the stove until the 
end comes. There is nothing doing now to keep 
me awake, since you boys quit getting me mad. 
Say, boys, do you know, I haven't been real mad 
since you quit coming here. The only fun I have 
had is swearing at my customers when they stick 
up their noses at my groceries. It's the funniest 
thing, when I tell an old customer that if they 
don't like my goods they can go plum to thunder, 
they get mad and go somewhere else to trade. 
Times must be changing. Years ago, the more I 
abused customers the more they liked it, and 
I just charged the goods to them with a pencil on 
a piece of brown wrapping paper. I had four 
cracker boxes full of brown wrapping paper with 
things charged on the paper against customers, 
but when anybody wanted to pay their account it 
made my head ache to find it, and so one day I bal- 
anced my books by using the brown wrapping 
paper to kindle the fire. If you ever want to get 
even with the world, easy, just pour a little kero- 
sene on your accounts, and put them in the stove. 


21 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


I have never been so free from worry as I have 
since I balanced my books in the stove. Well, I 
suppose yoti have come home on account of your 
dad’s sickness,” said the old groceryman, turn- 
ing to the bad boy, who had written a sign, “ The 
Morgue,” and pinned it on the window. “ I un- 
derstand your dad had an operation performed 
on him in a hospital. What did the doctors take 
out of him? ” 

“ Dad had an operation all right,” said the bad 
boy, “ but he is not as much interested in what 
they took out of him, as what he thinks they left 
in. They said they removed his appendix, and I 
guess they did, for dad showed me the bill the 
doctors rendered. The bill was big enough so 
they might have taken out a whole lot more. If 
I had been home I would never have let him 
be cut into, but ma insisted that he must have 
an operation. She said all the men on our street, 
and all that moved in our set, had had operations, 
and she was ashamed to go out in society and be 
forced to admit that dad never had an operation. 
She told dad that he could afford it better than 
half the people that had operations, and that a 
scar criss-cross on the stomach was a badge of 
honor. ' He never got a scar in the army, and she 
simply would not be able to look people in the 


22 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


face unless dad was operated on. Dad always 
was subject to stomach ache, but until appendi- 
citis became fashionable he had always taken a 
mess of pills, and come out all right, but ma diag- 
nosed the case the last time he was doubled up 
like a jack-knife, and dad was hustled off to the 
hospital, and they didn’t do a thing to him. 

“ He told me about it since I came home, and 
now he lays the whole thing to ma, and I have to 
stand between them. He is going to get even 
with ma, though. The first time she complains 
of anything going on inside of her works, he is 
going to send her right to a hospital and have the 
doctors do their worst. Dad said to me, says he : 

“ ‘ Hennery, if you ever feel anything like a 
caucus being held inside you, don’t you ever go to 
a hospital, but just swallow a stick of dynamite 
and light the fuse, then there won’t be anything 
left inside to bother you afterwards. When I 
got to the hospital they stripped me for a prize 
fight, put me on a table made of glass, and rolled 
me into the operating room, gave me chloroform 
and when they thought I was all in, they took an 
axe and chopped me. I could feel every blow, and 
it is a wonder they left enough of your old dad 
for you to hug when you came home.’ 

23 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

“ Say, it is kind of pitiful to hear dad talk about 
the things they left in him.” 

“ What things does he think they left in him,” 
asked the old groceryman, as he looked fright- 
ened, and felt of his stomach, as though he mis- 
trusted there might be something wrong with 
him, too. 

“ O, dad has been reading in the papers about 
doctors that perform operations leaving sponges, 
forceps, and things inside of patients, when they 
close up the place, and since dad has got pretty 
fussy since his operation he thinks they left some- 
thing in him. Some days he thinks they left a 
roll of cotton batting, or a pillow, or a bale of hay, 
but when there is a sharp pain inside he thinks 
they left a carving knife, but for a week he has 
settled down to the belief that the doctors left a 
monkey wrench in him, and he is just daffy on 
that subject. Says he can feel it turning around, 
as though it was miscrewing machinery, and he 
wants to consult a new doctor every day as to 
what he can take to dissolve a monkey wrench, 
so it will pass off through the blood and pores of 
the skin. He has taken it into his head that noth- 
ing will save his life except to travel all over the 
country, and the world. I am to go with him to 
look after him. 


24 


7 



Believes the doctors left a monkey wrench in him. 


j 

T 



PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


“ By ginger, it’s great ! Just think of it. Trav- 
eling all over the world and nothing to do but 
nurse my old dad who thinks he is filled with hard- 
ware and carpenter’s tools. Gee ! but I wish you 
could go,” said the bad boy, as he put him arm 
around his chum. “ Maybe we wouldn’t make 
these foreigners sit up and take an interest in 
something besides Royalty and Riots.” 

“ Well,” said the groceryman, “ they will have 
my sympathy with you alone over there.” 

“ But before you start on the road with your 
monkey-wrench show, you come in here and let 
me put up a package of those prunes to take 
along. They will keep in any climate, and there 
is nothing better for iron in the blood, such as 
your dad has, than prunes. Call again, bub, and 
we will arrange for you to write to your chum 
from all the places you go with your dad, and he 
can come in here and read the letters to me and 
the cat.” 

“ All right, old Father Time,” said the bad boy, 
as he drew a mug of cider out of the vinegar 
barrel, and took a swallow. “ But what you want 
to do is to get a road scraper and drive a team 
through this grocery, and clean the floor,” and 
the boys went out just ahead of the old man’s 
arctic overshoes, as he kicked at them, and then 

26 



Went out just ahead of the old man’s shoe. 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


he went back and sat down by the stove and 
stroked the cat, which had got its back down level 
again, after its old enemies had gone down the 
street, throwing snowballs at the driver of a 
hearse. 

“ It is a solemn occupation to drive a hearse,” 
said the bad boy. 

“ Not so solemn as riding inside,” said the 
chum. 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER 1 1. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Ready for Their Travels — 

The Bad Boy Labels the Old Man’s Suit Case — 
How the Cowboys Made Him Dance Once. 

The old groceryman was in front of the gro- 
cery, bent over a box of rutabagas, turning the 
decayed sides down to make the possible customer 
think all was not as bad as it might be, when a 
shrill whistle down the street attracted his atten- 
tion. Pie looked in the direction from which it 
came, and saw the bad boy coming with a suit 
case in one hand and a sole leather hat box in 
the other, and the old man went in the store to 
say a silent prayer, and to lay a hatchet and an 
ax handle where he could reach them if the worst 
came. 

“ Well, you want to get a good look at me 
now,” said the bad boy, as he dropped the valise 
on the floor, and put the hat box on the counter, 
“ for it will be months and maybe years, before 
you see me again.” 

“ Oh, joy!” said the old groceryman, as he 
heaved a sigh, and tried to look sorry. “ What 
is it, reform school, or have the police ordered 


29 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

you out of town ? I have felt it coming for a long 
time. This is the only town you could have plied 
your vocation so long in and not been pulled. 
Where are you going with the dude suit case and 
the hat box? ” 

“ Oh, dad has got a whole mess more diseases, 
and the doctors had a conversation over him Sun- 
day, and they say he has got to go away again, 
right now, and that a sea voyage will brace him 
up and empty him out so medicine over in Europe 
can get in its work and strengthen him so he can 
start back after a while and probably die on 
the way home, and be buried at sea. Dad says he 
will go, for he h^d rather die at sea than on land, 
’cause they don’t have to have any trouble about 
a funeral, ’cause all they do is to sew a man up 
in a piece of cloth, tie a sack of coal to his feet, 
slide him off a board, and he goes kerplunk down 
into the salt water about a mile, and stands there 
on his feet and makes the whales and sharks think 
he is a new kind of fish.” 

“ Gee ! but that is a programme that appeals 
to me as sort of uncanny,” said the old man. “ Is 
your dad despondent over the outlook? What 
new disease has he got ? ” 

“ All of ’em,” said the boy, as he took a label 
off a tomato can and pasted it on the end of the 


30 



Labeled his Dad's valise. 




PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


suit case. “ You take an almanac and read about 
all the diseases that the medicine advertised in 
the almanac cures, and dad has got the whole lot 
of them, nervous prostration, rheumatism, liver 
trouble, stomach busted, lungs congested, dia- 
phragm turned over, heart disease, bronchitis, 
corns, bunions, every darn thing a man can catch 
without costing him anything. But he is not de- 
spondent. He just thinks it is an evidence of gen- 
ius, and a certificate of standing in society and 
wealth. He argues that the poor people who have 
only one disease are not in it with statesmen and 
scholars. Oh, he is all right. He thinks if he 
goes to Europe all knocked out, he will class with 
emperors and dukes. Oh, since he had that opera- 
tion and had his appendix chopped out, he thinks 
there is a bond of sympathy between him and 
King Edward that will cause him to be invited to 
be the guest of royalty. He is just daffy,” and 
the bad boy took a sapolio label out of a box and 
pasted it on the other end of the valise. 

“ What in thunder and lightning are you past- 
ing those labels on your valise for?” said the 
old man, as the boy reached for a Quaker oats la- 
bel and a soap advertisement and pasted them on. 

“ Oh, dad said he wished he had some foreign 
labels of hotels and things on his valise, to make 


32 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


fellow travelers believe he had been abroad be- 
fore, and I told him I could fix it all right. You 
see, if I paste things all over the valise he will 
think it is all right, ’cause he is near sighted,” and 
the boy pasted on a label for 37 varieties of 
pickles, and then put on an advertisement for hair 
restorer on the hat box. 

“ Say, here’s a fine one, this malted milk label, 
with a New Jersey cow on the corner,” said the 
old man, as he began to take interest in the boy’s 
talent as an artist. “ And here, try one of these 
green pea can labels, and the pork and beans 
legend, and the only soap. Say, if you and your 
dad don’t create a sensation from the minute you 
take the train till you get back, you can take it 
out of my wages. When are you going? ” 

“ To-morrow night,” said the boy, as he put 
more labels on the hat box, and stood off and 
looked at them with the eye of an artist. “We 
go to New York first to stay a few days and see 
things, and then we take a steamer and sail 
away, and the sicker dad is the more time I will 
have to fill up on useful nollig.” 

“ Hennery,” said the old groceryman, as his 
chin trembled, and a tear came to his eye. “ I 
want to ask you a favor. At times, when you 
have been unusually mean, I have thought I 


33 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


hated you, but when I have said something ugly 
to you, and have laid awake all night regretting 
it, it has occurred to me that you were about the 
best friend I had. I think it makes an old man 
forget his years, to be chummy with a live boy, 
full of ginger, and I do like you, condemn you, 
and I can’t help it. Now I want you to write me 
every little while, on your trip, and I will read 
your letters to the customers here in the store, 
who will be lonely until they can hear that you are 
dead. The neighbors will come in to read your 
letters, and it will bring me custom. Will you 
write to me, boy, and pour out your heart to me, 
and tell me of the different troubles you get your 
dad into, for surely you cannot help finding trou- 
ble over there if you go hunting for it. Promise 
me, boy.” 

“ You bet your life I will, old pard,” said the 
v bad boy. “ I shall have to have some escape 
valve to keep from busting. I was going to write 
to my chum, but he is in love with a telephone girl, 
and he don’t take any time for pleasure. I will 
write-you about every dutch and duchess we meet, 
'every prince and pauper, and everything. You 
watch my smoke, and you will think there is a 
train afire. I hope dad will try and restrain him- 
self from wanting to fight everybody that belongs 


34 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


to any country but America. He has bought one 
of these little silk American flags to wear in his 
button hole, and he swears if anybody looks cross- 
eyed at that flag he will simply cut his liver out, 
and toast it on a fork, and eat it. He makes me 
tired, and I know there is going to be troubled 

“ Don't you think your dad's mind sort of wan- 
ders?" said the old groceryman, in a whisper 
“ It wouldn't be strange, after all he has gone 
through, in raising you up to your present size, 
if he was a little off his base." 

“ Well, ma thinks he is bug-house, and the 
hired girl is willing to go into court and swear to 
it, and that experience we had coming home from 
the Yellowstone park some time ago, made me 
think if he was not crazy he would be before long. 
You see, we had a hot box on the engine, and had 
to stay at a station in the bad lands for an hour, 
and there were a mess of cow boys on the plat- 
form, and I told dad we might as well have some 
amusement while we were there, and that a brake- 
man told me the cow boys were great dancers, 
but you couldn't hire them to dance, but if some 
man with a strong personality would demand that 
they dance, and put his hand on his pistol pocket 
they would all jump in and dance for an hour. 
That was enough for dad, for he has a microbe 

35 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


that lie is a man of strong personality, and that 
when he demands that anybody do something 
they simply got to do it, so he walked up and down 
the platform a couple of times to get his draw 
poker face on, and I went up to one of the cow 
boys and told him that the old duffer used to be 
a ballet dancer, and he thought everybody ought 
to dance when they were told to, and that if the 
spell should come on him, and he should order 
them to dance, it would be a great favor to me if 
they would just give him a double shuffle or two, 
just to ease his mind. 

“ Well, pretty soon he came along to where the 
cow boys were leaning against the railing, and, 
looking at them in a haughty manner, he said: 
‘ Dance, you kiotes, dance/ and he put his hand to 
his pistol pocket. Well, sir, I never saw so much 
fun in my life. Four of the cow 'boys pulled re- 
volvers and began to shoot regular bullets into 
the platform within an inch of dad's feet, and 
they yelled to him : ‘ Dance your own self, you 

ancient maverick ; whoop ’er up ! ’ and by gosh ! 
dad was bo frightened that he began to dance all 
around the platform, and it was like a battle, the 
bullets splintering the boards, and the smoke fill- 
ing the air, and the passengers looking out of the 
windows and laughing, and the engineer and fire- 

36 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


man looking on and yelling, and dad nearly 
exhausted from the exertion. I guess if the 
conductor had not got the hot box put out and 
yelled all aboard, dad would have had apoplexy, 



“He began to dance all around the platform ” 

bilt he let up, the cow boys quit shooting, and he 
got aboard the train and started. I stayed in the 
smoking car with the train butcher for more than 
an hour, 'cause I was afraid if I went in the car 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


where dad was he would make some remark that 
would offend my pride, and when I did go back to 
the car he just said: 'Somebody fooled you. 
Those fellows couldn't dance, and I knew it all 
the time.' Yes, I guess there is no doubt dad is 
crazy sometimes, but let me chaperone him 
through a few foreign countries and he will stand 
without hitching all right. Well, goodby, now, 
old man, and try and bear up under it, till you 
get a letter from me," and the bad boy took his 
labeled valise and hat box and started. 


38 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER III. 

The Bad Boy Writes About the Fun They Had Going 
to Washington — He and His Dad Call on Presi- 
dent Roosevelt — The Bad Boy Meets One 
of the Children and They Disagree. 

Washington, D. C. — My Dear Old Skate: I 
didn’t tell you in my last about the fun we had 
getting here. We were on the ocean wave two 
days, because the whole country was flooded from 
the rains, and dad walked the quarter deck of 
the Pullman car, and hitched up his pants, and 
looked across the sea on each side of the train 
with a field glass, looking for whales and por- 
poises. He seems to be impressed with the idea 
that this trip abroad is one of great significance to 
the country, and that he is to be a sort of min- 
ister plenipotentiary, whatever that is, and that 
our country is going to be judged by the rest of 
the world by the position he takes on world af- 
fairs. The first day out of Chicago dad corraled 
the porter in a section and talked to him until the 
porter was black in the face. I told dad the only 
way to get respectful consideration from a negro 
was to advocate lynching and burning at the 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


stake, for the slightest things, so when our porter 
was unusually attentive to a young woman on 
the car dad hauled him over the coals, and scared 
him so by talking of hanging, and burning in 
kerosene oil, that the negro got whiter than your 
shirt, and when he got away from dad he came 
to me and asked if that old man with the red 
nose and the gold-headed cane was as dangerous 
as he talked. I told him he was my dad, and 
that he was a walking delegate of the Amalga- 
mated Association of Negro Lynchers, and when 
a negro did anything that he ought to be pun- 
ished for they sent for dad, and he took charge 
of the proceedings and saw that the negro was 
hanged, and shot, and burned up plenty. But I 
told him that dad was crazy on the subject of 
giving tips to servants, and he must not fall dead 
when we got to Washington if dad gave him a 
$50 bill, and he must not give back any change, 
but just act as though he always got $50 from 
passengers. Well, you’d a dide to see that negro 
brush dad 50 times a day, and bring a towel 
every few minutes to wipe off his shoes, but he 
kept one eye, about as big as an onion, on dad 
all the time, to watch that he didn’t get stabbed. 

The next morning I took dad’s pants from un- 
der his pillow, and hid them in a linen closet, and 


40 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


dad laid in his berth all the forenoon, and had 
it out with the porter, whom he accused of steal- 
ing them. The doctors told me I must keep dad 
interested and excited, so he would not dwell on 
his sickness, and I did, sure as you are a foot high. 
Dad stood it till almost noon, when he came out 



'7 thought I would bust when Dad fished out a nickel and gave 
it to the porter ” 

of his berth with his pajamas on, these kind with 
great blue stripes like a fellow in the penitentiary, 
and when he went to the wash room I found his 
pants and then he dressed up and swore some at 
everybody but me. We got to Washington all 
right, and I thought I would bust when dad 

4i 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


fished out a nickel and gave it to the porter, and 
we got out of the car before the porter came to, 
and the first day we stayed in the hotel for fear 
the negro would see us, as I told dad that porter 
would round up a gang of negroes with razors 
and they would waylay us and cut dad all up into 
sausage meat. Dad is the bravest man I ever saw 
when there is no danger, but when there is a 
chance for a row he is weak as a cat. I spect 
it is on account of his heart being weak. A man’s 
internal organs are a great study. I spose a 
brave man, a hero, has to have all his inside 
things working together, to be real up and up 
brave, but if his heart is strong, and his liver 
is white, he goes to pieces in an emergency, and 
if his liver is all right, and he tries to fight just 
on his liver, when the supreme moment arrives, 
and his heart jumps up into his throat, and wab- 
bles and beats too quick, he just flunks. I would 
like to dissect a real brave man, and see what con- 
dition the things inside him are in, but it would be 
a waste of time to dissect dad, ’cause I know all 
his inner works need to go to a watchmaker and 
be cleaned, and a new main spring put in. 

Well, this morning dad shaved himself, and 
got on his frock coat, and his silk hat, and said 
we would go over to the white house and have a 


42 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


talk with Teddy, but first he wanted to go and 
see where Jefferson hitched his horse to the fence 
when he came to Washington to be innogerated, 
and where Jackson smoked his corn cob pipe, and 
swore and stormed around when he was mad, and 
to walk on the same paths where Zachariah Tay- 
lor Zacked, Buchanan catched it, and Lincoln put 
down the rebellion, and so we walked over toward 
the white house, and I was scandalized. I stopped 
to pick up a stone to throw at a dog inside the 
fence, and when I walked along behind dad, and 
got a rear view of his silk hat, it seemed as though 
I would sink through the asphalt pavement, for 
he had on an old silk hat that he wore before the 
war, the darnedest looking hat I ever saw, the 
brim curled like a minstrel show hat, the fur 
rubbed off in some places, and he looked like one 
of these actors that you see pictures of walking 
on the railroad track, when the show busts up at 
the last town. I think a man ought to dress so 
his young son won’t have a fit. I tried to get dad 
to go and buy a new hat, but he said he was going 
to wait till he got to London, and buy one just like 
King Edward wears, but he will never get to Lon- 
don with that hat, ’cause to-night I will throw it 
out of the hotel window and put a piece of stove 
pipe in his hat box. 


43 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


Well, sir, you wouldn’t believe it, but we got 
into the white house without being pulled, but it 
was a close shave, ’cause everybody looked at dad, 
and put their forefingers to their foreheads, for 
they thought he was either a crank, or an am- 
bassador from some furrin country. The detec- 
tives got around dad when we got into the ante- 
room, and began to feel of his pockets to see if 
he had a gun, and one of them asked me what the 
old fellow wanted, and I told them he was the 
greatest bob cat shooter in the west, and was on 
his way to Europe to invite the emperors and 
things to come over to this country and shoot 
cats on his preserve. Well, say, you ought to 
have seen how they stepped one side and waltzed 
around, and one of them went in the next room 
and told the president dad was there, and before 
we knew it we were in the president’s room, and 
the president began to curl up his lip, and show 
his teeth like some one had said “rats.” He got 
hold of dad’s hand, and dad backed off as though 
he was afraid of being bitten, and then they sat 
down and talked about mountain lion and cat 
shooting, and dad said he had a 22 rifle that he 
could pick a cat off the back fence with every time, 
out of his bedroom window, and I began to look 
around' at the pictures. Dad and the president 


44 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


talked about all kinds of shooting, from mudhens 
to moose, and then dad told the president he was 
going abroad on account of his liver, and wanted 



The President began to curl up his lip and show his teeth. 


a letter of introduction to some of the kings and 
emperors, and queens, and jacks, and all the face 
cards, and the president said he made it a prac- 
tice not to give any personal letters to his friends, 

45 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


the kings, but that dad could tell any of them 
that he met that he was an American citizen, and 
that would take him anywhere in Europe, and 
then he got up and began to show his teeth at dad 
again, and dad gave him the grand hailing sign 
of distress of the Grand Army and backed out, 
dropped his hat, and in trying to pick it up, he 
stepped on it, but that made it look better, any- 
way, and we found ourselves outside the room, 
and a lot of common people from the country were 
ready to go in and talk politics and cat shoot- 
ing. 

Well, we looked at pictures, and saw the state 
dining room where they feed 50 diplomats at a 
time on mud turtle and champagne, and a boy 
about my size looked sort of disdainful at me, and 
I told him it he would come outside I would mash 
his jaw, and he said I could try it right there if 
I was in a hurry to go, and I was starting to give 
him a swift punch when a detective took hold of 
my arm and said they couldn't have any scrap 
there, 'cause the president's son could not fight 
with common boys, and I asked him who he called 
a common boy, and then dad said we better go 
before war broke out in a country that was illy 
prepared for hostilities on a large scale, and then 
I told a detective that dad was liable to have one 

46 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


of his spells and begin shooting any minute, and 
then the detectives all thought dad was one of 



these president assassinationists, and they took 
him into a room and searched him, and asked him 
a whole lot of fool questions, and they finally let 



PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


us out, and told us we better skip the town before 
night. Dad got kind of heavy-hearted over that 
and took a notion he would like to see ma again 
before crossing the briny deep, so you came near 
having your little angel again soon. This weak- 
ness of dad’s didn’t last long, for we’re looking 
for a warm time in New York and old Lunnon. 

So long, Hennery. 


48 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER IV. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Visit Mount Vernon — Dad 

Weeps at the Grave of the Father of Our Country. 

New York City. — My Dear Uncle Ezra : I got 
a letter from my chum this morning, and he says 
he was in the grocery the day he wrote, and you 
were a sight. He says that if I am going to be 
away several months you will never change your 
shirt till I get back, for nobody around the gro- 
cery seems to have any influence over you. I 
meant to have put you under bonds before I left, 
to change your shirt at least quarterly, but you 
ought to change it by rights every month. The 
way to do is to get an almanac and make a mark 
on the figures at the first of the month, and when 
you are studying the almanac it will remind you 
of your duty to society. People east here, that is, 
business men in your class, change their shirts 
every week or two. Try and look out for these 
little matters, insignificant as they may seem, 
because the public has some rights that it is dan- 
gerous for a man to ignore. 

Dad and I have been down to Mount V ernon, 
and had a mighty solemn time. I think dad ex- 

49 



Y°u couldn’t look through that fence at what remains of the 
ratner of His Country without thinking good things 



PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


pected that we would be met at the trolley car by 
a delegation of descendants of George Washing- 
ton, by a four-horse carriage, with postilions and 
things, and driven to the old house, and received 
with some distinction, as dad had always been an 
admirer of George Washington, and had pointed 
with pride to his record as a statesman and a 
soldier, but all we saw was a bunch of negroes, 
who told us which way to walk, and charged us 
ten cents apiece for the information. 

At Mount Vernon we found the old house 
where George lived and died, where Martha told 
him to wipe his feet before he came in the house, 
and saw that things were cooked properly. We 
saw pictures of revolutionary scenes and men of 
that period, relics of the days when George was 
the whole thing around there. We saw the bed 
on which George died, and then we went down 
to the icehouse and looked through the fence and 
saw the marble coffins in which George and Mar- 
tha were sealed up. Say, old man, I know you 
haven’t got much reverence, but you couldn’t look 
through that fence at what remains of the father 
of his country without taking off your hat and 
thinking good things while you were there. 

I was surprised at dad; he cried, though he 
never met George Washington in all his life. I 

5i 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

have seen dad at funerals at home, when he was 
a bearer, or a mourner, and he never acted as 
thought it affected him much, but there at Mount 
Vernon, standing within eight feet of the remains 
of George Washington, he just lost his nerve, 
and bellered, and I felt solemn myself, like I had 
been kept in after school when all the boys were 
going in swimming. If a negro had not asked 
dad for a quarter I know dad would have got 
down on his knees and been pious, but when he 
gave that negro a swift kick for butting in with 
a commercial proposition, in a sacred moment, 
dad come to, and we went up to the house again. 

Dad- said what he wanted was to think of 
George Washington just as a country farmer, in- 
stead of a general and a president. He said we 
got nearer to George, if we thought of him get- 
ting up in the morning, putting on his old farmer 
pants and shirt, and going downstairs in his 
stocking feet, and going out to the kitchen by 
the wooden bench, dipping a gourd full of rain 
water out of a barrel into an earthen wash basin 
and taking some soft soap out of a dish and wash- 
ing himself, his shirt open so his great hairy 
breast would catch the breeze, his suspenders, 
made of striped bed ticking, hanging down, his 
hair touseled up until he had taken out a yellow 

52 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

pocket comb and combed it, and then yelling to 
Martha to know about how long a workingman 
would have to wait for breakfast. And then dad 
said he liked to think of George Washington sit- 
ting down at the breakfast table and spearing 
sausages out of a platter, and when a servant 
brought in a mess of these old-fashioned buck- 
wheat cakes, as big as a pieplate, see George, in 
imagination, pilot a big one on to his plate, and 
cover it with sausage gravy, and eat like he didn’t 
have any dyspepsia, and see him help Martha to 
buckwheat cakes, and finally get up from break- 
fast like a full Christian and go out on the farm 
and count up the happy slaves to see if any of 
them had got away during the night. 

By ginger, dad inspired me with new thoughts 
about the father of his country. I had always 
thought of Washington as though he was con- 
stantly crossing the Delaware in a skiff, through 
floating ice, with a cocked hat on, and his coat 
flaps trimmed with buff nankeen stuff, a sort of a 
male Eliza in “ Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” getting 
away from the hounds that were chasing her to 
chew her pants. I was always thinking of George 
either chopping cherry tree£, or standing on a 
pedestal to have his picture taken, but here at the 
old farm, with dad to inspire me, I was just min- 

53 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


gling with Washington, the planter, the neigh- 
bor, telling the negroes where they would get off 
at if they didn’t pick cotton fast enough, or break- 
ing colts, or going to the churn and drinking 
a quart of buttermilk, and getting the stomach 
ache, and calling .upstairs to Martha, who was 
at the spinning wheel, or knitting woolen socks, 
and asking her to. fix up a brandy smash to cure 
his griping pains. I thought of the father of 
his country taking a severe cold, and not being 
able to run into a drug store for a bottle of cough 
sirup, or a quinine pill, having Martha fix a tub 
of hot mustard water to £oak those great feet of 
his, and bundle him up in a flannel blanket, give 
him a hot whisky, and put him to bed with a hot 
brick at his feet. 

Then, when I looked at a duck blind out in the 
Potomac, near the shore, I thought how George 
used to put on an old coat and slouch hat and take 
his gun and go out in the blind, and shoot can- 
vas-back ducks for dinner, and paddle his boat out 
after the dead birds, the way Grover Cleveland 
did a century later. I tell you, old man, the way 
to appreciate our great statesmen, soldiers and 
scholars is to think of them just as plain, ordinary 
citizens, doing the things men do nowadays. It 
does dad and I more good to think of Washing- 

54 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


ton and his friends camping out down the Poto- 
mac, on a fishing trip, sleeping on a bed of pine 
boughs, and cooking their own pork, and roasting 
sweet potatoes in the ashes, eating with appetites 
like slaves, than to think of him at a state dinner 
in the white house, with a French cook disguis- 
ing the food so they could not tell what it was. 

O, I had rather have a picture of George Wash- 
ington and Lafayette coming up the bank of the 
Potomac toward the house, loaded down with 
ducks, and Martha standing on the porch of 
Mount Vernon asking them who they bought 
the ducks of and how much they cost, than to 
have one of those big paintings in the white house 
showing George and Lafayette looking as though 
they had conquered the world. If the phonograph 
had been invented then, and we could listen to the 
conversation of those men, just as they said 
things, it would be great. Imagine George say- 
ing to Lafayette, so you could hear it now: 
“ Lafe, that last shot at that canvasback you 
made was the longest shot ever made on the Po- 
tomac. It was a Jim dandy, you old frog eater,” 
and imagine Lafayette replying: “ You bet your 
life, George, I nailed that buck canvasback with 
a charge of number six shot, and he never knew 
what struck him.” But they didn't have any pho- 

55 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

nographs in those days and so you have got to 
imagine things. 

How would Washington’s farewell address 
sound now in a phonograph, or some of George’s 
choice swear words at a slave that had ridden a 
sore-backed mule down to Alexandria after a jug 
of rum. I would like to run a phonograph show 
with nothing in the machine but ancient talk from 
George Washington, but we can have no such luck 
unless George is born again. 

Old man, if you ever get a furlough from busi- 
ness, you go down to Mount Vernon and revel in 
memories of the father of his country. If you 
go, hunt up a negro with a hair lip, that is a ser- 
vant there, and who used to be Washington’s 
body servant, unless he is a liar, and tell him I sent 
you and he won’t do a thing to you, for a dollar or 
so. I told that negro that dad was a great gen- 
eral, a second Washington, and he wore all the 
skin off his bald head taking off his hat to dad 
every time dad looked at him, and he bowed until 
his back ached, but when we were going away, 
and dad asked me what ailed the old monkey to 
act that way, the old negro thought these new 
Washingtons were a pretty tough lot. 

All the time at Mount Vernon I couldn’t get 
up meanness enough to play any trick on dad, but 

56 





“I slipped it down the back of Dad's pants." 



PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


I picked up a sort of a horse chestnut or some- 
thing, with prickers on it as sharp as needles, and 
as we were getting on the trolley I slipped it down 
the back of dad’s pants, near where his suspen- 
ders button on, and by the time we sat down in 
the car the horse chestnut had worked down 
where dad is the largest, and when he leaned back 
against the seat he turned pale and wiggled 
around and asked me if he looked bad. I told 
him he looked like a corpse, which encouraged 
him so he almost fainted. He asked me if I had 
heard of any contagious diseases that were prev- 
alent in Virginia, ’cause he felt as though he had 
caught something. I told him I would ask the 
conductor, so I went and asked the conductor 
what time we got to W ashington, and then I went 
back to dad and told him the conductor said there 
was no disease of any particular account, except 
smallpox and yellow fever, and that the first 
symptom of smallpox was a prickling sensation 
in the small of the back. 

Dad turned green and said he had got it all 
right, and I had the darndest time getting him 
back to the hotel at Washington. Say, I had to 
help him undress, and I took the horse chestnut 
and put it in the foot of the bed, and got dad in, 
and I went downstairs to see a doctor, and then 

58 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

I came back and told him the doctor said if the 
prickly sensation went to his feet he was in no 
danger from smallpox, as it was an evidence that 
an old vaccination of years ago had got in its 
work and knocked the disease out of his system 
lengthwise, and when I told dad that he raised up 
in bed and said he was saved, for ever since I 
went out of the room he had felt that same dread- 
ed prickling at work on his feet, and he was all 
right. 

I told dad it was a narrow escape and that it 
ought to be a warning to him. Dad has to wear 
a dress suit to dinner here and cough up money 
every time he turns around, 'cause I have told 
the bell boys dad is a bonanza copper king, and 
they are not doing a thing to dad. 

O, I guess I am doing just as the doctors at 
home ordered, in keeping dad's mind occupied. 

Well, so long, old man, I have got to go to 
dinner with dad, and I am going to order the 
dinner myself, dad said I could, and if I don’t 
put him into bankruptcy, you don’t know your 
little Hennery. 


59 




PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER V. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Have Dinner at the Wal- 
dorf-Astoria — The Bad Boy Orders Dinner — The 
Old Man Gets Stuck — Tries to Rescue a 
Countess in Distress. 

Waldorf-Astoria, New York. — Dear Uncle 
Ezra: We are still at this tavern, but we don't 
do anything but sleep here, and stay around in the 
lobby evenings to let people look at us, and dad 
wears that old swallow-tail coat he had before 
the war, but he has got a new silk hat, since we 
got here; one of these shiny ones that is so slick 
it makes his clothes look offul bum. We about 
went broke on the first supper we had, or dinner 
they call it here. You see, dad thought this was 
about a three-dollar-a-day house, and that the 
meals were included, like they do at Oshkosh, and 
so when we went down to dinner dad said we 
wouldn't do a thing to old Astor. He let me or- 
der the dinner, but told me to order everything 
on the bill-of-sale, because we wanted to get the 
worth of our three dollars a day. Well, honest, 
I couldn't order all there was, 'cause you couldn't 
have got it all on a billiard table. Say, that list 

61 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

they gave me had everything on it that was ever 
et or drunk, but I told dad they would fire us out 
if we ordered the whole prescription, so all I or- 
dered was terrapin, canvasback duck, oysters, 
clams, crabs, a lot of new kinds of fish, and some 
beef and mutton, and turkey, and woodcock, and 
partridge, and quail, and English pheasant, and 
lobster and salads and ices, and pie and things, 
just to stay our stomachs, and when it came to 
wine, dad weakened, because he didn’t want to 
set a bad example to me, so he ordered hard 
cider for hisself and asked me if I wanted any- 
thing to drink, and I ordered brown pop. You’d 
a been tickled to see the waiter when he took that 
order, ’cause I don’t s’pose anybody ever ordered 
cider and brown pop there since Astor skinned 
muskrats for a living, when he was a trapper 
up north. Gosh, but when they brought that din- 
ner in, you ought to have seen the sensation it cre- 
ated. Most of the people in the great dining hall 
looked at dad as though he was a Crases, or a 
Rockefeller, and the head waiter bowed low to 
dad, and dad thought it was Astor, and dad 
looked dignified and hurt at being spoken to by a 
common tavern keeper. Well, we et and et, but 
we couldn’t get away with hardly any of it, and 
dad wanted to wrap some of the duck and lobsters 

62 





“The waiter brought Dad the check. 



PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

and things in a newspaper and take it to the 
room for a lunch, but the waiter wouldn’t have it. 
But the cyclone struck the house when dad and I 
got up to go out of the dining-room, and the 
waiter brought dad the check. 

“ What is this ? ” said dad, as he put on his 
glasses and looked at the check which was $43 
and over. 

“ Dinner check, sir,” said the waiter, as he 
straightened back and held out his hand. 

“ Why, ain’t this house run on the American 
plan ? ” said dad, as his chin began to tremble. 

“ No, sir, on the Irish plan,” said the waiter. 
“ You pays for what you horders,” and dad began 
to dig up. He looked at me as though I was to 
blame, when he told me to order all there was 
in sight. Well, I have witnessed heart-rending 
scenes, but I never saw anything that would draw 
tears like dad digging down for that $43. The 
doctors at home had ordered excitement for dad, 
but this seemed to be an overdose, and I was 
afraid he would collapse and I offered him my 
glass of brown pop to stimulate him, but he told 
me I could go plumb, and if I spoke to him again 
he would maul me. He got his roll half out of his 
pistol pocket, and then talked loud and said it 
was a damoutridge, and he wanted to see Astor 

64 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


himself before he would allow himself to be held 
up by highwaymen, and then all the other diners 
stood up and looked at dad, and a lot of waiters 
and bouncers surrounded him, and then he pulled 
out the roll, and it was pitiful to see him wet his 
trembling thumb on his trembling dry tongue 
and begin to peel off the bills, like you peel the 
layers off an onion, but he got off enough to pay 
for the dinner, gave the waiter half a dollar, and 
smiled a sickly smile at the head waiter, and I led 
him out of the dining-room a broken-down old 
man. As we got to the lobby, where the horse 
show of dress-suit chappies was beginning the 
evening procession, I said to dad : “ Next time 

we will dine out, I guess,” and at that he rallied 
and seemed to be able to take a joke, for he said: 
“We dined out this time. We dined out $43,” 
and then we joined the procession of walkers 
around, and tried to look prosperous, and after 
awhile dad called a bell boy, and asked him if 
there wasn’t a good dairy lunch counter near the 
Waldorf, where a man could go and get a bowl 
of bread and milk, and the bell boy gave him the 
address of a dairy lunch place, and I can see my 
finish, ’cause from this out we will probably live 
on bread and milk while we are here, and I hate 
bread and milk. 


65 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


It got all around the hotel, about the expensive 
dinner dad ordered for himself and the little heir 
to his estate, and everybody wanted to get ac- 
quainted with dad and try to get some stock in his 
copper mine. T had told dad about my telling the 
boys he was a bonanza copper miner, and he nev- 
er batted an eye when they asked him about his 
mine, and he looked the part. One man wanted 
dad to cash a check, ’cause the bank was closed, 
and he was a rich-looking duke, and dad was just 
going to get his roll out and peel off some more 
onion, when I said : “ Not on your tintype, Mr. 

Duke,” and dad left his roll in his pocket, and the 
duke gave me a look as though he wanted to 
choke me, and went away, saying: “ There is 
Mr. Pierpont Morgan, and I can get him to cash 
it.” I saved dad over a hundred dollars on that 
scheme, and so we are making money every min- 
ute. We went to our room early, so dad could 
digest his $43 worth of glad food. 

Gee, but this house got ripped up the back be- 
fore morning. You remember I told you about 
a countess, or a duchess, or some kind of high- 
up female that had a room next to our room. 
Well, she is a beaut, from Butte, Mont., or Cuba, 
or somewhere, for she acts like a queen that has 
just stepped off her throne for a good time. She 

66 



Wanted Dad to cash a check, cause the bank was closed. 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


has got a French maid that is a peacharino. You 
know that horse chestnut, with the prickers on, 
that I put in dad’s pants at Washington. Well, I 
have still got it, and as it gets dry the prickers 
are sharper than needles, sharper even than a 
servant’s tooth, as it says in the good book. I 
thought I would give dad a run for his money, 
’cause exercise and excitement are good for a 
man that dined heartily on $43 worth of rich 
food, so when we went to our room I told dad 
that I was satisfied from what a bell boy told me 
that the countess in the next room, who had gold 
cords over her shoulders for suspenders, was 
stuck on him, because she was always inquiring 
who the lovely old gentleman was with the sweet 
little boy. Dad he got so interested that he for- 
got to cuss me about ordering that dinner, and he 
said he had noticed her, and would like real well 
to get acquainted with her, ’cause a man far away 
from home, sick as a dog, with no loving wife to 
look after him, needed cheerful company. So I 
told him I had it all arranged for him to meet 
her, and then I went out in the hall, sort of whist- 
ling around, and the French maid came out and 
broke some English for me, and we got real chum- 
my, ’cause she was anxious to learn English, and 
I wanted to learn some French words; so she in- 

68 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

vited me into the room, and we sat on the sofa 
and exchanged words quite awhile, until she was 
called to the telephone in the other room. Say, 
you ought to have seen me. I jumped up and put 
my hand inside the sheets of the bed, and put that 
chestnut in there, right about the middle of the 
bed, and then, after learning French quite a spell, 
with the maid, we heard the countess getting of$ 
the elevator, and the maid said I must skip, 'cause 
it was the countess' bed-time, and I went back 
and told dad the whole thing was arranged for 
him to meet the countess, in a half an hour or 
so, as she had to write a few letters to some kings 
and dukes, and when she gave a little scream,- 
as though she was practicing her voice on an 
opera, or something, dad was to go and rap at 
the door. Gosh, but I was sorry for dad, for. 
he was so nervous and anxious for the half hour 
to expire that he walked up and down the room, 
and looked at himself in the mirror, and acted 
like he had indigestion. I had told the maid that 
she and the countess must feel perfectly safe, if 
anything ever happened, 'cause my dad was the 
bravest man in the world, and he would rush to 
the rescue of the countess, if a burglar got in in 
the night, or the water pipes busted, or anything, 
and all she had to do was to screech twice and dad 

69 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

would be on deck, and she must open the door 
quicker-n scat, and she thanked me, and said she 
would, and for me to come, too. Say, on the dead, 
wasn’t that a plot for an amateur to cook up? 
Well, sir, we had to wait so long for the countess 
to get on the horse chestnut that I got nervous 
myself, but after awhile there came a scream that 
would raise your hair, and I told dad the countess 
was singing the opera. Dad said : “ Hennery, 

that ain’t no opera, that’s tragedy,” but she gave 
two or three more stanzas, and I told dad he bet- 
ter hustle, and we went out in the hall and rapped 
at the door of the countess’ room, and the maid 
opened it, and told us to send for a doctor and a 
policeman, ’cause the countess was having a fit. 
Well, say, that was the worst ever. The countess 
had jumped out of bed, and was pulling the lace 
curtains around her, but dad thought she was 
crazy, and was going to jump out of the window, 
and he made a grab for her, and he shouted to her 
to “ be cam, be cam, poor woman, and I will res- 
cue you.” I tried to pacify the maid the best I 
knew how, and dad was getting the countess 
calmer, but she evidently thought he was an as- 
sassin, for every little while she would yell for 
help, and then the night watchman came in with 
a house policeman, and one of them choked dad 

70 


PECK'S BAD BOY ABROAD 


off, and they asked the countess what the trouble 
was, and she said she had just retired when she 
was stabbed about a hundred times in the small 
of the back with a poniard, and she knew con- 



And then the night watchman came in with the house policeman 
and choked Dad off. 

spirators were assassinating her, and she 
screamed, and this old bandit, meaning dad, came 
in, and the little monkey, meaning me, had held 
his hand over her maid’s mouth, so she could not 
make any outcry. 


7 1 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


Well, I got my horse chestnut all right, out of 
the bed, and the policeman told the countess not 
to be alarmed, and go back to bed, and they took 
dad and I to our room, and asked us all about it. 
Gee, but dad put up a story about hearing a wom- 
an scream in the next room, and, thinking only of 
the duty of a gentleman under the circumstances, 
rushed to her rescue, and all there was to it was 
that she must have had a nightmare, but he said if 
he had it to do over again, he would do the same. 
Anyway, the policeman believed dad, and they 
went off and left us, and we went to bed, but dad 
said: "Hennery, you understand, I don't want 
to make any more female acquaintances, see, 
among the crowned heads, and from this out we 
mingle only with men. The idea of me going in- 
to a woman's room and finding a Floradora with 
fits and tantrums, and me, a sick man. Now, 
don't write to your ma about this, 'cause she nev- 
er did have much confidence in me, around wom- 
en with fits." So, Uncle Ezra, you must not let 
this get into the papers, see ? 

Well, we have bought our tickets for Liverpool, 
and shall sail to-morrow, and while you are mak- 
ing up your cash account Saturday night, we 
shall be on the ocean. I s'pose I will write you 
on the boat, if they will tie it up somewhere so it 
will stand level. Your dear boy. Hennery. 

72 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER VI. 

The Bad Boy Writes the Old Groceryman About 
Ocean Voyages — His Dad Has an Argument 
Over a Steamer Chair. 

On Board the Lucinia, Mid-ocean. 
Dear Old Geezer. 

I take the first opportunity, since leaving New 
York, to write you, ’cause the boat, after three 
days out, has got settled down so it runs level, 
and I can write without wrapping my legs around 
the table legs, to hold me down. I have tried a 
dozen times to write, but the sea was so rough 
that part of the time the table was on top of me 
and part of the time I was on top, and I was so 
sick I seem to have lost my mind, over the rail, 
with the other things supposed to be inside of 
me. O, old man, you think you know what sea- 
sickness is, ’cause you told me once about cross- 
ing Lake Michigan on a peach boat, but lake 
sickness is easy compared with the ocean mal- 
ady. I could enjoy common seasickness and think 
it was a picnic, but this salt water sickness takes 
the cake. I am sorry for dad, because he holds 
more than I do, and he is so slow about giving up 

73 



"Vm sorry about Dad, cause he holds more than I do and he is 
slow about giving up meals he paid for.” 




PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

meals that he has paid for, that it takes him 
longer to commune with nature, and he groans 
so, and swears some. I don’t see how a person 
can swear when he is seasick on the ocean, with 
no sure thing that he will ever see land again, 
and a good prospect of going to the bottom, where 
you got to die in the arms of a devil fish, with 
a shark biting pieces out of your tender loin and 
a smoked halibut waiting around for his share of 
your corpse, and whales blowing syphons of 
water and kicking because they are so big that 
they can’t get at you to chew cuds of human gum, 
and porpoises combing your damp hair with their 
fine tooth comb fins, and sword fish and saw- 
tooth piscatorial carpenters sawing off steaks. 
Gee, but it makes me crawl. I once saw a dead 
dog in the river, .with bull heads and dog-fish 
ripping him up the back, and I keep thinking I 
had rather be that dog, in a nice river at home, 
with bullheads that I knew chewing me at their 
leisure, than to be a dead boy miles down in the 
ocean, with strange fish and sea serpents quar- 
reling over the tender pieces in me. A man told 
me that if you smoke cigarets and get saturated 
with nickoteen, and you are drownded, the fish 
will smell of you, and turn up their noses and go 
away and leave your remains, so I tried a cigaret, 

75 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

and, gosh, but I had rather be et by fish than 
smoke another, on an ocean steamer. It only 
added to my sickness, and I had enough before. 
I prayed some, when the boat stood on its head 
and piled us all up in the front end, but a chair 
struck me on the place where Fitzsimmons hit 
Corbett, and knocked the prayer all out of me, 
and when the boat stood on her butt end and we 
all slid back the whole length of the cabin, and 
I brought up under the piano, I tried to sing a 
hymn, such as I used to in the ’Piscopal choir, 
before my voice changed, but the passengers who 
were alive yelled for some one to choke me, and 
I didn’t sing any more. Dad was in the state- 
room when we were rolling back and forth in 
the cabin, and between sicknesses he came out to 
catch me and take me into the stateroom, but he 
got the rolling habit, too, and he rolled a match 
with an actress who was voyaging for her health, 
and they got offully mixed up. He tried to rescue 
her, and grabbed hold of her belt and was reeling 
her in all right, when a man who said he was her 
husband took dad by the neck and said he must 
keep his hands off or get another nose put on be- 
side the one he had, and then they all rolled under 
a sofa, and how it came out I don’t know, but the 
next morning dad’s eye was blacked, and the fel- 

76 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


low who said he was her husband had his front 
teeth knocked out, and the actress lost her back 
hair and had to wear a silk handkerchief tied 
around her head the rest of the trip, and she 
looked like a hired girl who has been out to a 
saloon dance. 

The trouble with dad is that he butts in too 
much. He thinks he is the whole thing and 
thinks every crowd he sees is a demonstration 
for him. When the steamer left New York, there 
were hundreds of people on the dock to see 
friends off, and they had flowers to present to the 
friends, and dad thought they were all for him, 
and he reached for every bunch of roses that was 
brought aboard, and was going to return thanks, 
for them, when they were jerked away from him, 
and he looked hurt. When the gang plank was 
pulled in, and the boat began to wheeze, and 
grunt, and move away from the dock, and dad 
saw the crowd waving handkerchiefs and laugh- 
ing, and saying bon voyage , he thought they 
were doing it all for him, and he started in to 
make a speech, thanking his fellow countrymen 
for coming to see him off, and promising them 
that he would prove a true representative of his 
beloved country in his travels abroad, and that 
he would be true to the stars and stripes where- 

77 



“Started in to make a speech thanking his fellow countrymen for 

coming to see him off.” 






PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


ever fortune might place him, and all that rot, 
when the boat got so far away they could not 
hear him, and then he came off his perch, and said, 
“Hennery, that little impromptu demonstration 
to your father, on the eve of his departure from 
his native land, perhaps never to return, ought 
to be a deep and lasting lesson to you, and to 
show you that the estimation in which I am held 
by our people, is worth millions to you, and you 
can point with pride to your father/’ I said 
“rats” and dad said he wouldn’t wonder if the 
boat was full of rats, and then we stood on deck, 
and watched the objects of interest down the bay. 
As we passed the statue of Liberty, which France 
gave to the republic, on Bedloe’s Island, dad 
started to make a speech to the passengers, but 
one of the officers of the boat told dad this was 
no democratic caucus, and that choked him off, 
but he was loaded for a speech, and I knew it was 
only a matter of time when he would have to fire 
it off, but I thought when we got outside the 
bar, into the ocean, his speech would come up with 
the rest -of the stuff, and I guess it did, for after 
he began to be sea sick he had to keep his mouth 
shut, which was a great relief to me, for I felt 
that he would say something that would get this 
country in trouble with other nations, as there 

79 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

were lots of foreigners on board. I heard that 
J. Pierpont Morgan was on board, and I told 
everybody I got in conversation with that dad 
was Pierpont Morgan, and when people began to 
call him Mr. Morgan, I told dad the passengers 
thought he was Morgan, the great financier, and 
it tickled dad, and he never denied it. Anyway, 
the captain put dad and I at his own table, and he 
called me “Little Pierp,” and everybody dis- 
cussed great financial questions with dad, and 
everything would have been lovely the whole 
trip, only Morgan came amongst us after he had 
been sea sick for three days, and they gave him 
a seat opposite us, and with two Morgans at the 
same table it was a good deal like two Uncle 
Tom’s in an Uncle Tom’s Cabin show, so dad 
had to stay in his stateroom on account of sick- 
ness, a good deal. Then dad got to walking on 
deck and flirting with the female passengers. 
Say, did you ever see an old man who was stuck 
on hisself, and thought that every woman who 
looked at him, from curiosity, or because he had 
a wart on his neck, and watch him get busy mak- 
ing ’em believe he is a young and kitteny thing, 
who is irresistible? Gee, but it makes me tired. 
No man can mash, and make eyes, and have a love 
scene, when he has to go to the rail every few 

80 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

minutes and hump hisself with something in him 
that is knocking at the door of his palate, to 
come out the same way it went in. Dad found a 
widow woman who looked back at him kind of 
sassy, when he braced up to her, and when the 
ship rolled and side-stepped, he took hold of her 
arm to steady her, and she said maybe they better 
sit down on deck and talk it over, so dad found 
a couple of steamer chairs that were not in use, 
and they sat down near together, and dad took 
hold of her hand to see if she was nervous, and 
he told me I could go any play mumbletypeg in 
the cabin, and I went in the cabin and looked 
out of the window at dad and the widow. Say, 
you wouldn’t think two chairs could get so close, 
and dad was sure love sick, and so was she. 
The difference between love sick and sea sick is 
that in love sick you look red in the face and 
snuggle up, and squeeze hands, and look fondly, 
and swallow your emotion, and try to wait pa- 
tiently until it is dark enough so the spectators 
won’t notice anything, and in sea sickness you 
get pale in the face, and spread apart, and let go 
of hands, and after you have stood it as long as 
you can you rush to the rail and act as though you 
were going to jump overboard, and then stop 
sudden and let-’er-go-gallagher, right before 

81 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


folks, and after it is over you try to' look as 
though you had enjoyed it. I will say this much 
for dad, he and the widow never played a duet 
over the rail, but they took turns, and dad held 
her as tenderly as though they were engaged, 
and when he got her back to the steamer chair he 
stroked her face and put camphor to her nose, and 
acted like an undertaker that wasn’t going to let 
the remains get away from him. They were hav- 
ing a nice convalescent time, just afore it broke 
up, and hadn’t either of them been sick for ten 
minutes, and dad had put his arm around her 
shoulders, and was talking cunning to her, and 
she was looking lovingly into dad’s eyes, and 
they were talking of meeting again in France in 
a few weeks, where she was going to rent a villa, 
and dad was saying he would be there with both 
feet, when I opened the window and said, “The 
steward is bringing around a lunch, and I have 
ordered two boiled pork sandwiches for you two 
easy marks.” Well, you’d a dide to see ’em jump. 
What there is about the idea of fat pork that 
makes people who are sea sick have a relapse, I 
don’t know, but the woman grabbed her stum- 
mix in both hands and left dad and rushed into 
the cabin yelling “enough,” or something like 
that, and dad laid right back in the chair and 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

blatted like a calf, and said he would kill me dead 
when we got ashore. Just then an Englishman 
came along and told dad he better get up out of 
his chair, and dad said whose chair you talking 
about, and the man said the chair was his, and if 
dad didn't get out of it, he would kick him in the 
pants, and dad said he hadn't had a good chance 
at an Englishman since the Revolutionary war, 
and he just wanted a chance to clean up enough 
Englishmen for a mess, and dad got up and stood 
at “attention," and the Englishman squared off 
like a prize fighter, and they were just going to 
fight the battle of Bunker Hill over again, when 
I run up to an officer with gold lace on his coat 
and lemon pie on his whiskers, and told him an 
old crazy Yankee out on deck was going to mur- 
der a poor sea sick Englishman, and the officer 
rushed out and took dad by the coat collar and 
made him quit, and when he found what the 
quarrel was about, he told dad all the chairs were 
private property belonging to the passengers, 
and for him to keep out of them, and he apol- 
ogized to the Englishman and they went into the 
saloon and settled it with high balls, and dad 
beat the Englishman by drinking two high balls 
to his one. Then dad set into a poker game, with 
ten cents ante, and no limit, and they played along 

83 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


for a while until dad got four jacks, and he bet 
five dollars, and a Frenchman raised him five 
thousand dollars, and dad laid down his hand 
and said the game was too rich for his blood, 
and when he reached in his vest pocket for mon- 
ey to pay for his poker chips he found that his 
roll was gone, and he said he would leave his 
watch for security until he could go to his state 
room and get some money, and then he found 
that his watch had been pinched, and the Eng- 
lishman said he would be good for it, and dad 
came out in the cabin and wanted me to help him 
find the widow, cause he said when she laid her 
head on his shoulder, to recover from her sick- 
ness, he felt a fumbling around his vest, but he 
thought it was nothing but his stomach wiggling 
to get ready for another engagement, but now 
he knew she had robbed him. Say, dad arid I 
looked all over that boat for the widow, but she 
simply had evaporated. But land is in sight, and 
we shall land at Liverpool this afternoon, and 
dad is going to lay for the widow at the gang 
plank, and he won't do a thing to her. I guess 
not. Well, you will hear from me in London 
next, and I'll tell you if dad got his money and 
watch back. Hennery. 


84 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER VII. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Eat Fog — Call on Astor — 
A Dynamite Outrage. 

London, England. 

Dear Old Man: 

Well, sir, if a court sentenced me to live in 
this town, I would appeal the case, and ask the 
judge to temper his sentence with mercy, and 
hang me. Say, the fog here is so thick you have 
to feel around like a blind goddess, and when you 
show up through the fog you look about eighteen 
feet high, and you are so wet you want to be run 
through a clothes wringer every little while. For 
two days we never left the hotel, but looked out 
of the windows waiting for the fog to go by, and 
watching the people swim through it, without 
turning a hair. Dad was for going right to the 
Lord Mayor and lodging a complaint, and de- 
manding that the fog be cleared off, so an Ameri- 
can citizen could go about town and blow in his 
money, but I told him he could be arrested for 
treason. He come mighty neai being arrested on 
the cars from Liverpool to London. When we 
got off the steamer and tried to find the widow 

85 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

who robbed dad of his watch and roll of money, 
but never found her, we were about the last pas- 
sengers to reach the train, and when we got 
ready to get on we found these English cars 
that open on the sides, and they put you into a 
box stall with some other live stock, and lock you 
in, and once in a while a guard opens the door 
to see if you are dead from suffocation, or have 
been murdered by the other passengers. Dad 
kicked on going in one of the kennels the first 
thing, and said he wanted a parlor car; but the 
guard took dad by the pants and gave him a 
shove, and tossed me in on top of dad, and two 
other passengers and a woman in the compart- 
ment snickered, and dad wanted to fight all of 
’em except the woman, but he concluded to mash 
her. When the door closed dad told the guard he 
would walk on his neck when the door opened, 
and that he was not an entry in a dog show, and 
he wanted a kennel all to himself, and asked for 
dog biscuit. Gee, but that guard was mad, and 
he gave dad a look that started the train going. 
I whispered to dad to get out his revolver, be- 
cause the other passengers looked like hold up 
men, and he took his revolver out of his satchel 
and put it in his pistol pocket, and looked fierce, 
and the woman began to act faint, while the pas- 

86 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


sengers seemed to be preparing to jump on dad 
if he got violent. When the train stopped at 
the first station I got out and told the guard that 
the old gentleman in there was from Helena, 
Montana, and that he had a reputation from St. 
Paul to Portland, and then I held up both hands 
the way train robbers make passengers hold up 
their hands. When I went back in the car dad 
was talking to the woman about her resembling a 
woman he used to know in the states, and he 
was just going to ask her how long she had been 
so beautiful, when the guard came to the side 
door and called the woman out into another stall, 
and then one of the passengers pulled out a pair 
of handcufifs and told dad he might as well sur- 
render, because he was a Scotland yard detective 
and had spotted dad as an American embezzler, 
and if he drew that gun he had in his pocket 
there would be a dead Yankee in about four min- 
utes. Well, I thought dad had nerve before, but 
he beat the band, right there. He unbuttoned his 
overcoat and put his finger on a Grand Army 
button in his buttonhole, and said, “Gentlemen, 
I am an American citizen, visiting the cr'owned 
heads of the old world, with credentials from the 
President of the United States, and day after to- 
morrow I have a date to meet your king, on offi- 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

cial business that means much to the future peace 
of our respective countries. Lay a hand on me 
and you hang from the yard arm of an American 
battleship/’ Well, sir, I have seen a good many 
bluffs in my time, but I never saw the equal of 
that, for the detective turned white, and apol- 
ogized, and asked dad and I out to luncheon at 
the next station, and we went and ate all there 
was, and when the time was up the detective dis- 
appeared and dad had to pay for the luncheon, 
but he kicked all the way to London, and the 
guard would not listen to his complaints, but told 
him if he tried to hold up the train he would be 
thrown out the window and run over by the train. 
We had the compartment to ourselves the rest of 
the way to London, except about an hour, when 
the guard shoved in a farmer who smelled like 
cows, and dad tried to get in a quarrel with him, 
about English roast beef coming from America, 
but the man didn’t have his arguing clothes on, 
so dad began to find fault with me, and the man 
told dad to let up on the kid or he would punch 
his bloody ’ed off. That settled it, when the man 
dropped his “h,” dad thought he was one of the 
nobility, and he got quite chummy with the Eng- 
lishman, and then we got to London, and dad had 
a quarrel about his baggage, and after threaten- 

88 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

ing to have a lot of fights he got his trunk on the 
roof of a cab, and in about an hour we got to the 
hotel, and then the fog began an engagement. If 
the fog here ever froze stiff, the town would look 
like a piece of ice with fish frozen in. Gee, but I 
would like to have it freeze in front of our hotel, 
so I could take an ax and go out and chop a frozen 
girl out, and thaw her till she came to. 

Say, old man, if anybody ever wants to treat 
you to a trip to Europe, don’t come here, but go 
to some place where they don’t think they can 
speak English. You can understand a Nitalian or 
a Frenchman, or a Dutchman, who can’t speak 
English, and knows he can’t, better than you can 
an Englishman who thinks he can speak Eng- 
lish, and can’t, “don’t you know.” Everything is 
“don’t you know.” If a servant gives you an 
evening paper, he says, “’Ere’s your paiper, don’t 
you know,” and if a man should — I don’t say they 
would, but if a man should give you a civil an- 
swer, when you asked him the name of a street, 
he would look at you as though you were a canni - 
bal, and say, “Regent street, don’t you know,” 
and then he would act as though you had broken 
him of his rest. Dad asked more than a dozen 
men where Bill Astor lived, and of all the popu- 
lation of London I don’t believe anybody knows, 

89 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


except one newsboy. We rode half a day on top 
of a bus, through streets so crowded that the 
horses had to creep, and dad hung on for fear the 
bus would be tipped over, and finally we got out 
into the suburbs, where the rich people live, and 
dad said we were right on the trail of King Ed- 
ward, and we got ofif and loitered around, and 
dad saw a beautiful place, with a big iron fence, 
and a gate as big as a railroad bridge, and dad 
asked a newsboy who lived there, and the boy 
made up a face at dad and said, “H’astor, you 
bloke/’ and he put out his hand for a tip. It was 
the first civil answer dad had received in Lon- 
don, so he gave the boy a dollar. The boy fell 
over on the sidewalk, dead, and dad started to go 
away for fear he would be arrested for murder, 
but I kicked the boy on the pants, and he got up 
and yelled some kind of murdered English, and 
more than a dozen newsboys came on a gallop, 
and when the boy told them what had happened 
they all wanted dad to ask them questions. I told 
the boys dad was Andrew Carnegie, and that he 
was giving away millions of dollars, so when dad 
got to the gate of the beautiful H’astor place, the 
boys yelled Andrew Carnegie, and a flunkey 
flunked the gate open and dad and I went in, and 
walked up to the house. Astor was on the ver- 


90 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


anda, smoking a Missouri corn cob pipe, and 
drinking American beer, and seemed to be wish- 
ing he was back home in America. Dad marched 
right up to the veranda, like a veteran soldier, 
and Astor could see dad was an American by 
the dandruff on his coat collar, and Astor said, 
“You are an American citizen and you are wel- 
come. Once I was like you, and didn’t care a 
continental dam for anybody, but in a moment of 
passion I renounced my country, swore allegiance 
to this blawsted country, and everybody hates me 
here, and I don’t dare go home to collect my rent 
for fear I will be quarantined at Ellis Island and 
sent back to England as an undesirable emigrant 
who has committed a crime, and is not welcome 
in the land where I was born. Old man, have a 
glass of Milwaukee beer and let’s talk of your 
home and my birthplace, and forget that there is 
such a country as England.” Dad sat down on 
the porch, and I went out on the lawn chasing 
peacocks and treeing guinea hens, and setting 
dogs on the swans, until a butler or a duke or 
something took me by the collar and shook me 
till my teeth got loose, and he took me back to 
the veranda and sat me down on the bottom step 
so hard my hair raised right up stiff, like a porcu- 
pine. Then I listened to dad and Astor talk about 

9i 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


America, and I never saw a man who seemed to 
be so ashamed that he was a brevet Englishman, 
as he did. He said he had so much money that 
it made his headache to hear the interest accum- 
ulate, nights, when he couldn’t sleep, and yet he 
had no more enjoyment than Dreyfus did on 
Devil’s Island. He had automobiles that would 
fill our exposition building, horses and carriages 
by the score, but he never enjoyed a ride about 
London, because only one person in ten thou- 
sand knew him, and those who did looked upon 
him with pity and contempt because he had re- 
nounced his country to get solid with the Eng- 
lish aristocracy, and nobody would speak to him 
unless they wanted to borrow money, and if they 
did borrow money from him he was afraid they 
would pay it back, and make him trouble count- 
ing it. He told dad he wanted to get back into 
America, and become a citizen again of that 
grand old country of the stars and stripes, and 
asked dad how he could do it, for he said he had 
rather work in a slaughter house in America 
than be a grand duke in England. I never saw 
dad look so sorry for a man as he did for Astor, 
and he told him the only way was to sell out his 
ranch in London and go back on an emigrant 
ship, take out his first papers, vote the democratic 


92 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

ticket and eventually become a citizen. Astor 
was thinking over the proposition, and dad had 
asked him if he was not afraid of dynamiters, 
when he shuddered and said every day he ex- 
pected to be blown sky high, and finally he 
smelled something burning and said the smell re- 
minded him of an American 4th of July. You 
see, I had been sitting still on the step of the 
veranda so long I got nervous, for something ex- 
citing, so I took a giant firecracker out of my 
pocket and lit the long tail, and shoved it under 
the porch and looked innocent, and just then one 
of the flunkies with the tightest pants you ever 
saw came along and patted me on the head and 
said I was a nice boy, and that made me mad, 
and when he went to sit down beside me on the 
step I took my horse chestnut out of my pocket 
and put it on the step just where he sat down, and 
how it happened to come out so I don’t know, it 
must have been Providence. You see just as the 
flunkey flunked on the chestnut burr, the fire 
cracker went off, and the man jumped up and 
said “’Ells-fire, h’am blowed,” and he had his 
hands on his pants, and the air was full of smoke, 
and dad got on his knees and said, “Now I lay 
me,” and Mr. Astor fainted all over a rocking 
chair and tipped beer bottles on the veranda and 


93 



Dad got on his knees and said "Now 1 lay me; 



PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


more than forty servants came, and I told dad to 
come on, and we got outside the gate, ahead of 
the police, and got a cab* and drove quicker than 
scat to the hotel, and I ast dad what he thought 
it was that went off, and he said “You can search 
me,” but he said he had got enough of trying to 
reform escaped Americans, and we got in the 
hotel and laid low, and the newspapers told about 
a dynamite outrage, and laid it to anarchists. 
Well I must close, cause we are going to see the 
American minister and get a date to meet King 
Edward. We won’t do a thing to Edward. 

Yours, Hennery. 


95 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER VIII. 

The Bad Boy Writes About the Craze for Gin in the 
Whitechapel District — He Gives His Dad a 
Scare in the Tower of London. 

London, England. — My Dear Chum: I re- 
ceived your letter yesterday, and it made me 
homesick. Gee, but if I could be home there with 
you and go down to the swimming hole and get 
in all over, and play tag in the sand, and tie some 
boy's pants and shirt in knots, and yell that the 
police are coming, and all grab our clothes under 
our arms and run across lots with no clothes on, 
and get in a barn and put on our clothes, and dry 
our hair by pounding it with a stick, so we would 
not get licked when we got home, life would be 
worth living, but here all I do is to dodge people 
on the streets and see them look cross when they 
step on me. 

Say, boy, you will never know your luck in be- 
ing a citizen of good old America, instead of a 
subject of Great Britain, because you have got 
to be rich or be hungry here, and if you are too 
rich you have got no appetite. You have heard 
of the roast beef of old England, but nobody eats 

96 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

it but the dukes and bankers. The working men 
never even saw a picture of a roast beef, and yet 
we look upon all Englishmen as beef-eaters, but 
three-fourths of the people in this town look hun- 
gry and discouraged, and they never seem to know 
whether they are going to have any supper. 

I went down to a market this morning where 
the middle class and the very poor people buy 
their supplies, and it would make you sick to see 
them.’ They buy small loaves of bread and a 
penny's worth of tea, and that is breakfast, and 
if a man is working he takes some of the bread to 
work for lunch, and the wife or mother buys a 
carrot or a quarter of a cabbage, and maybe a 
bone with a piece of meat about as big as a fish 
bait, and that makes supper, with a growler of 
beer. 

Say, the chunk of meat with a bone that an 
American butcher would throw at a dog that he 
had never been introduced to would be a ban- 
quet for a large family over here. 

I have been down into the White Chapel dis- 
trict, which is the Five Points of London, and 
of the thousands of tough people I saw there 
was not a man but looked as though he would 
cut your liver out for a shilling, and every woman 
was drunk on gin. , What there is about gin that 

97 


r 



“Do you mean to tell me you stood around and let Richard kill 
those princes ?” 




“ Dad insisted on carrying an umbrella to keep off the ashes.’” 


























« 






























PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


makes it the national beverage for bad people 
beats me, for it looks like water, tastes like medi- 
cine and smells like cold storage eggs. At home 
when a person takes a drink of beer or whisky 
he at least looks happy for a minute, and maybe 
he laughs, but here nobody laughs unless some- 
body gets hurt, and that seems to tickle every- 
body in the White Chapel district. 

The people look mad and savage when they 
are not drinking, as though they were only look- 
ing for an opportunity to commit murder, and 
then when they take a drink of gin, instead of 
smiling and smacking their lips as though it 
was good and braced them up, they look as 
though they had been stabbed with a dirk and 
they put on a look of revenge, as though they 
would like to wring a child's neck or cut holes in 
the people they meet. 

Two drinks of gin makes a man or woman 
look as though they had swallowed a buzz saw. I 
always thought drinking liquor made people think 
they were enjoying- themselves, or that they took 
it to drive away care and make them forget their 
sorrows, but when these people drink gin they 
seem to do it the way an American drinks car- 
bolic acid, to end the whole business quick. 

At home the drinker drinks to make him feel 


99 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


like he was at a picnic. Here every drinker acts 
like a suicide, who only hopes that he may com- 
mit a murder before the gin ends his career. And 
there are hundreds of thousands of people in 
this town who have no ambition except to get a 
bit of bread to sustain them till they can get a 
drink of gin, and gradually they let up on bread 
entirely and feed on gin, and look like mad dogs 
and snarl at everybody they see, as much as to 
say: “ What are you going to do about it? ” 

A good square American meal would give them 
a fit, and they would go to a hospital and die if 
the meal could not be got out of them. 

Gosh, but I was glad to get out of the White 
Chapel district, and I kept looking back for 
fear one of the men or women would slit me up 
the back with a butcher knife, and laugh like an 
insane asylum inmate. 

Do you know, those people who drink gin and 
go hungry are different from our American mur- 
derers. Our murderers will assault you with r; 
smile, rob you with a joke on their roue’s e: 
and give you back cai fare when they hold you 
up, and if they murder you they will do it easy 
and lay you out with your hands across on your 
breast and notify the coroner, but your White 
Chapel murderer wants to disembowel you ana 


ioo 



“They look like mad dogs and snarl at everybody. 7 ’' 






PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


cut you up into chunks, and throw your remains 
head first into something nasty, and if you have 
money enough on your person to buy a bottle of 
gin your murderer is as well satisfied as though 
he got a roll. Some men in our country commit 
murders in order to get money to lay away so 
they can live a nice, respectable life and be good 
ever afterwards, but your slum murderer in Lon- 
don just kills because his stomach craves a drink, 
and when he gets it he is tame, like a tiger that 
has eaten a native of India. 

You may think this letter is a solemn occasion 
because I tell you about things that are not funny, 
but if you ever traveled abroad you will find that 
there is no fun anywhere except in America un- 
less you make it or buy it. 

We are taking in the solemn things first in 
order to get dad's mind in a condition so he can 
be cured of things he thinks ail him. I took dad 
to the Tower of London, and when we got out of 
it he wanted to have America interfere and have 
the confounded place burned down and grass 
sown on the site and a park made of it. 

The tower covers 13 acres of ground, and 
there are more things brought to a visitor's atten- 
tion that ought to be forgotten than you ever 
thought about. 

101 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


I remember attending the theater at home and 
seeing Richard the Third played, and I remem- 
ber how my sympathies were aroused for the two 
little boy princes that were murdered by Richard 
the Third, but I thought it was a fake play, and 
that there was nothing true about it, but, by gosh, 
it was right here in the Tower of London that 
the old hump-backed cuss murdered those little 
princes, and dad and I stood right on the spot, 
and the beef-eater who showed us around told us 
all the particulars. Dad was indignant, and said 
to the beef-eater: 

“ Do you mean to tell me you stood around 
and let Richard kill those princes without utter- 
ing a protest or protecting them or ringing for 
the police? By the great hornspoon, you must 
have been accessory to the fact, and you ought to 
be arrested and hung,” and dad pounded his cane 
on the stone floor and looked savage. 

The beef-eater got red in the face and said: 
“ Begging your pardon, don't you know, but hT 
was not 'ere at the time. This 'istory was made 
six 'undred years ago.” 

Dad begged the man's pardon and told him he 
supposed the boys were murdered a year or two 
ago, and he gave the beef-eater a dollar, and he 
was so gratified I think he would have had a mur- 




102 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

der committed for dad right there and then if 
dad had insisted on it. 

You feel in going through the tower like you 
was in an American slaughter house, for it was 
here that kings and queens were beheaded by the 
dozen. They showed us axes that were used to 
behead people, and blocks that the heads of the 
victims were laid on, and the places where the 
heads fell on the floor. It seemed that in olden 
times when a king or a queen got too gay, the 
anti-kings or queens would go to the palace and 
catch the king or queen in the act, and take them 
by the neck and hustle them to the tower, and 
when a king or queen got in the tower they went 
out on the installment plan, and after being 
thrown in the gutter for the mob to recognize, and 
walk on the bodies, they would bring them back 
in the tower, and seal them up in a pigeon hole for 
future generations to cry over. 

All my life I have had in our house to look at a 
picture of beautiful Anne Boleyn, and here I stood 
right where her head was cut off, and I couldn’t 
help thinking of how we in America got our civili- 
zation from the descendants of the English people 
who cut her head off. 

By ginger, old chum, it made me hot. I didn’t 
care to look at the old armor, or the crown jewels, 

103 

& 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


which make you think of a cut glass factory, but I 
reveled in the scenes of the beheading. I never 
was stuck much on kings and queens, but it seems 
to me if they had to murder them they ought to 
have given ’em a show, and let them fight for 
their lives, instead of getting into a trap, like you 
would entice a rat with cheese, and then cut their 
heads off. 

I suppose it is right here that we inherited the 
desire to lynch and burn at the stake the negroes 
that commit crime and won’t confess at home. 
When anything is born in the blood you can’t get 
rid of it without taking a dose of patriotism and 
purifying the blood, and I advise you never to 
visit the Tower of London, unless you want to 
feel like going out and killing some one that is 
tied up with a rope. 

Hearing of these murders and seeing the place 
where they were committed does not give you an 
idea of fair play and you don’t feel like taking 
some one of your size when you fight, but you get 
to thinking that if you could catch a cripple who 
couldn’t defend himself you would like to take a 
baseball club and maul the stuffing out of him. 
You become imbued with the idea that if you went 
to war you would not want to stand up and fight 
fair, but that you would like to get your enemy 


104 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


in a bunch and drop dynamite down on him from 
a balloon, and kill all in sight, and sail away with 
an insane laugh. 

Gee, but another day in this tower, and I would 



The Beef-Eaters' stampede. 


want to go home and murder ma, or the neigh- 
bors. 

The only thing we have got in America that 
compares with the Tower of London and its asso- 
ciates is the Leutgert sausage factory in Chicago, 
where Leutgert got his wife into the factory, mur- 

105 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


dered her, and is alleged to have cut her up in 
pieces and made sausage of the meat, given the 
pieces with gristle in to his dogs, boiled the bones 
until they would run into the sewer, dissolved the 
remnants in concentrated lye, and sold the saus- 
age to the lumber Jacks in the pine woods. 

I expect Chicago will buy that sausage factory 
and make a show of it, as London does the tower, 
and you can go and see it, and feel that you are 
as full of modern history as I am of ancient his- 
tory, here in London. 

I could see that dad was getting nervous every 
time a new beheading was described to us, and I 
thought it was time to wake him up. In going 
through the room where the old armor was dis- 
played the beef eater told us who wore the dif- 
ferent pieces of armor, and he said at times the 
spirit of the dead came back to the tower and 
occupied the armor, and I noticed that dad shied 
at some of the pieces of armor, so when we got 
right into the midst of it, and there was armor 
on every side, and dad and the beef eater were 
ahead of me, and dad was walking fast in order 
to get out quick, I pushed over one of the pieces, 
and it went crashing to the floor and the noise 
was like a boiler factory exploding, and the dust 

106 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

of centuries rose up, and the noise echoed down 
the halls. 

Well, you’d a died to see dad and the beef eater. 
Dad turned pale and got down on his knees, and 
I think he began to pray, if he knows how, and 
he trembled like a leaf, and the beef eater got 
behind a set of armor that Cromwell or some old 
duck used to wear, and said, “ Wot in the bloody 
’ell is the matter with the h’armor ? ” and then a 
lot of other beef eaters came, and they thought 
dad was the spirit of King John, and they stam- 
peded, and finally I got dad to stop praying, or 
whatever it was that he was doing, and I led 
him out, and when he got into the open air he re- 
covered and said. “ ’Ennery, ’hi have got to get 
out of Lunnon, don’t you know, because me ’eart 
is palpitating,” and we went back to the ’otel, to 
see if our invitation to visit King Hedward had 
arrived. 

Say, we are getting so we talk just like English 
coachmen, and you won’t hundredstand us when 
we get ’ome. Yours, with a haccent. 

’Ennery, 


107 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER IX. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Call on King Edward and 
Almost Settle the Irish Question. 

London, H-england. — Dear Uncle Ezra : The 
worst is over, and dad and I have both touched a 
king. Not the way you think, touching a king for 
a hand-out, or borrowing his loose change, the 
way you used to touch dad when you had to pay 
for your goods, but just taking hold of his hand 
and shaking it in good old United States fashion. 

The American minister arranged it for us. He 
told somebody that Peck’s Bad Boy and his dad 
were in town, and just wanted to size up a king 
and see how he averaged up with United States 
politicians, and the king set an hour for us to call. 

Well, you’d a dide to see dad fix up. Every- 
body said, when we showed our card at the hotel, 
notifying us that we were expected at Marlboro 
House at such a time, that we would be expected 
to put on plenty of dog. That is what an Ameri- 
can from Kalamazoo, who sells breakfast food, 
said, and the hotel people said we would be obliged 
to wear knee breeches and dancing pumps and 
silk socks, and all that kind of rot, and men’s 

108 



r ' Everyone in Oshkosh said was out of sight and was good 
enough for any King. 




PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


furnishers began to call upon us to take our meas- 
ure for clothes, but when they told us how much 
it would' cost, dad kicked. He said he had a golf 
suit he had made in Oshkosh at the time of the 
tournament, that every one in Oshkosh said was 
out of sight, and was good enough for any king, 
and so he rigged up in it, and I hired a suit at a 
masquerade place, and dad hired a coat, kind of 
red, to go with his golf pants and socks, and he 
wore canvas tennis shoes. I looked like a picture 
out of a fourteenth century book, but dad looked 
like a clown in a circus. One of dad’s calves made 
him look as though he had a milk leg, cause the 
padding would not stay around where the calf 
ought to be, but worked around towards his shin. 
We went to Marlboro House in a hansom cab, 
and all the way there the driver kept looking down 
'from the hurricane deck, through the scuttle hole, 
to see if we were there yet, and he must have 
talked with other cab drivers in sign language 
about us, for every driver kept along with us, 
looked at us and laughed, as though we were a 
wild west show. 

On the way to the king’s residence it was all 
I could do to keep dad braced up to go through 
the ordeal. He was brave enough before we got 
the invitation, and told what he was going to say 


no 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

to the king, and you would think he wasn't afraid 
of anybody, but when we got nearer to the house 
and dad thought of going up to the throne and 
seeing a king in all his glory, surrounded by his 
hundreds of lords and dukes and things, a crown 
on his head, and an ermine cloak trimmed with 
red velvet, and a six-quart milk pan full of dia- 
monds, some of them as big as a chunk of alum, 
dad weakened, and wanted to give the whole 
thing up and go to a matinee, but I wouldn't have 
it, and told him if he didn't get into the king row 
now that I would shake him right there in Lon- 
don and start in business as a Claude Duval high- 
wayman and hold up stage coaches, and be hung 
on Tyburn Tree, as I used to read about in my 
history of Sixteen-String Jack and other English 
highwaymen. Dad didn’t want to see the family 
disgraced, so he let the cabman drive on, but he 
said if we got out of this visit to royalty alive, it 
was the last tommyrot he would indulge in. 

Well, old man, it is like having an operation 
for appendicitis, you feel better when you come 
out from under the influence of the chloroform 
and the doctor shows you what they took out of 
you, and you feel that you are going to live, un- 
less you grow another vermiform appendix. We 
were driven into a sort of Central park, and up 


hi 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


to a building that was big as a lot of exposition 
buildings, and the servants took us in charge and 
walked us through long rooms covered with pic- 
tures as big as side show pictures at a circus, but 
instead of snake charmers and snakes and wild 
men of Borneo and sword swallowers, the king’s 
pictures were about war, and women without 
much clothes on from the belt up. Gosh, but 
some of those pictures made you think you could 
hear the roar of battle and smell gun powder, and 
dad acted as though he wanted to git right down 
on the marble floor and dig a rifle pit big enough 
to git into. 

They walked us around like they do when you 
are being initiated into a secret society, only they 
didn’t sing, “ Here comes the Lobster,” and hit 
you with a dried bladder. The servants that 
were conducting us laffed. I had never seen an 
Englishman laff before, and it was the most in- 
teresting thing I saw in London. Most English- 
men look sorry about something, as though some 
dear friend died every day, and their faces seem 
to have grown that way. So when they laff it 
seems as though the wrinkles would stay there, 
unless they treated their faces with massage. 
They were laughing at dad’s dislocated calf, and 
his scared appearance, as though he was going 


1 12 



Dad and King Edward settling the Irish question. 



PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


to receive the thirty-second degree, and didn’t 
know whether they were going to throw him over 
a precipice or pull him up to the roof by the hind 
legs. We passed a big hall clock, and it struck 
just when we were near it, and of all the “ Hark, 
from the tombs ” sounds I ever heard, that clock 
took the cake. Dad thought it sounded like a 
death knell, and he would have welcomed the 
turning in of a fire alarm as a sound that meant 
life everlasting, beside that doleful sound. 

After we had marched about three mile heats, 
and passed the chairs of the noble grand and the 
senior warden, and the exalted ruler, we came 
to a bronze door as big as the gate to a cemetery, 
and the grand conductor gave us a few instruc- 
tions about how to back out fifteen feet from the 
presence of the king, when we were dismissed, 
and then he turned us over to a little man who 
was a grand chambermaid, I understood the fel- 
low to say. The door opened, and we went in, 
and dad’s misplaced calf was wobbling as though 
he had locomotor attacks-ye. 

Well, there were a dozen or so fellows standing 
around, and they all had on some kind of uni- 
forms, with gold badges on their breasts, and in 
the midst of them was a little, sawed-off fat fel- 
low, not taller than five feet six, but a perfect pic- 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

ture of the cigar advertisements of America fer 
a cigar named after the king. I expected to see 
a king as big as Long John Wentworth of Chi- 
cago, a great big fellow that could take a small 
man by the collar and throw him over a house, 
and I felt hurt at the small size of the king of 
Great Britain, but, gosh, he is just like a Yankee, 
when you get the formality shook off. 

We bowed and dad made a courtesy like an 
old woman, and the king came forward with a 
smile that ought to be imitated by every English- 
man. They all imitate his clothes and his hats 
and his shoes, but he seems to be the only Eng- 
lishman that smiles. Maybe it is patented, and 
nobody has a right to smile without paying a 
royalty, but the good-natured smile of King Ed- 
ward is worth more than stomach bitters, and the 
English ought to be allowed to copy it. There is 
no more solemn thing than a party of English- 
men together in America, unless it is a party of 
speculators that are short on wheat, or a gather- 
ing of defeated politicians when the election re- 
turns come in. But the king is as jolly as though 
he had not a note coming due at the bank, and 
you would think he was a good, common citizen, 
115 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


after working hours, at a round beer table, with 
two schooner loads in the hold and another 
schooner on the way, frothing over the top of the 
stein. That is the feeling I had for the king when 
he came up to us and greeted dad as the father 
of the bad boy and patted me on the shoulder and 
said : “ And so you are the boy that has made 

more trouble than any boy in the world, and 
had more fun than anybody, and made them all 
stand around and wonder what was coming next. 
You’re a wonder. Strange the American people 
never thought of killing you.” I said yessir, and 
tried to look innocent, and then the king told dad 
to sit down, and for me to come and stand by his 
knee, and by ginger, when he patted me on the 
cheek, and his soft hand squeezed my hand, and 
he looked into my eyes with the most winning ex- 
pression, I did not wonder that all the women 
were in love with him, and that all Englishmen 
would die for him. 

He asked dad all about America, its institu- 
tions, the president, and everything, and dad was 
just so flustered that he couldn’t say much, until 
the king said something about the war between 
the States, in which the southern states achieved 
116 



Dad sang “My Country, Mis of Thee;’ and the King sang “ God 

Save the King.” 




PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


a victory. I don’t know whether the king said 
that just to wake dad up, ’cause dad had a grand 
army button on his coat, but dad choked up a lit- 
tle, and then began to explode, a little at a time, 
like a bunch of firecrackers, and finally he went 
ofif all in a bunch. Dad said : “ Look a here, Mr. 
King, some one has got you all balled up about 
that war. I know, because I was in it, and now 
the north and the south are United, and can whip 
any country that wants to fight a champion, and 
will go out and get a reputation, by gosh ! ” 

The king laughed at touching dad off, and 
asked dad what was the matter of America and 
Great Britain getting together and making all 
nations know when they had better keep their 
places, and quit talking about fighting. Dad 
said he never would consent to America and Great 
Britain getting together to fight any country until 
Ireland got justice and was ready to come into 
camp on an equality, and the king said he would 
answer for the Irishmen of Ireland if dad would 
pledge the Irishmen of America, ’cause we had 
about as many Irishmen in America as he had 
in Ireland, and dad said if the king would give 
Ireland what she asked for, he would see that the 
118 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


Irishmen in America would sing God Save the 
King. I guess dad and the king would have set- 
tled the Irish question in about fifteen minutes, 
and signed a treaty, only a servant brought in a 
two-quart bottle of champagne, and dad and the 



" Went over backwards and struck on his pants” 

king hadn’t drank a quart apiece before dad 
started to sing “ My Country Tis of Thee, Sweet 
Land of Libertee,” and the king sang “ God Save 
the King,” and, by thunder, it was the same tune, 
and tears came into dad’s eyes, and the king took 
out his handkerchief and wiped his nose, and I 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


bellered right out, and the king rose and offered 
a toast to America and everybody in it, and they 
swallered it, and dad said there was enough juice 
left in the bottle for one more round, and he pro- 
posed a toast to all the people of Great Britain, 
including the Irish and the king who loved them, 
and down she went, and they were standing up. 
And I told dad it was time to go. 

Say, it was great, Uncle Ezra, and I wish you 
could have been there, and there had been an- 
other bottle. The only thing that happened to 
mar the reunion of dad and the king was when 
we were going out backwards, bowing. There 
was a little hassock back of me, and I kicked it 
back of dad, and when dad's heels struck it he 
went over backwards and struck on his golf pants, 
and dad said: “ El, 'Ennery, have broken my 
bloomink back, but who cares," and when the 
servants picked dad up and took him out in the 
hall and marched us to the entrance, dad got in 
the cab, gave the grand hailing sign of distress, 
started to sing God save something or other, and 
went to sleep in the cab, and I took him to the 
hotel. Yours, Hennery. 


120 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER X. 

The Bad Boy Writes of Ancient and Modern High- 
waymen— They Get a Taste of High Life in 
London and Dad Tells the Story of the 
Picklemaker’s Daughter. 

London, England. — My Dear Old Skate : 
Well, if we are going to see any of the other coun- 
tries on this side of the water before our return 
ticket expires, we have got to be getting a move 
on, and dad says in about a week we will be doing 
stunts in Paris that will bring about a revolution, 
and wind up the republic of France, and seat some 
nine-spot on the throne that Napoleon used to 
wear out his buckskin pants on. 

Dad asked me tother day what I cared most 
to see in London, and I told him I wanted to 
visit Newgate prison, and the places made fa- 
mous by the bold highwaymen of a century or two 
ago. He thought I was daffy, but when I told 
him how I had read “ Claude Duval ” and “ Six- 
teen-String Jack ” and all the highway litera- 
ture, in the haymow, when dad thought I was 
weeding the garden, he confessed that he used 
to hunt those yellow covered books out of the 


121 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

manger when I was not reading them, and that 
he had read them all himself, when I thought he 
was studying for his campaign speeches, and so 
he said he would go with me. So we visited 
Homestead Heath, where Claude Duval used to 
ride “ Black Bess,” and hold up people who trav- 
eled at night in post chaises, and we found splen- 
did spots where there had been more highway 
robbery going on than any place east of Missouri, 
but I was disgusted when I thought what chumps 
those old highway robbers were, compared to the 
American highway robbers and hold up men of 
the present day. 

In Claude Duval’s time he had a brace of flint- 
lock pistols, which he had to examine the prim- 
ing every time a victim showed up, and while he 
was polite when he robbed a duchess, he used to 
kill people all right, though if they had had cam- 
eras at that time the flash from the priming pan 
would have taken a flash-light picture of the 
robber, so he could have been identified when he 
rode off in the night to a roadside inn and filled 
up on beer, while he counted the ten shillings he 
had taken from the silk purse of the victim. Why, 
one of our American gangs that hold up a train, 
and get an express safe full of greenbacks, and 
shoots up a mess of railroad hands and passen- 


122 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


gers with Winchesters and automatic pistols, and 
blows up cars with dynamite and gets away and 
has to have a bookkeeper and a cashier to keep 
their bank accounts straight, could give those old 
Claude Duvals and Sixteen-String Jacks cards 
and spades. 

But civilization, dad says, has done much for 
the highway robbery business, and he says we in 
America have arrived at absolute perfection. 
However, I was much interested in looking over 
the ground where my first heroes lived and died, 
and did business, and when we went to the pris- 
ons where they were confined, and were shown 
where Tyburn Tree stood, that so many of them 
were hung on, tears came to my eyes at the 
thought that I was on the sacred ground where 
my heroes croaked, and went to their deaths with 
smiles on their faces, and polite to the last. The 
guard who showed us around thought that dad 
and I were relatives of the deceased highwaymen, 
and when we went away he said to dad : “ Call 
again, Mr. Duval. Always glad to serve any of 
the descendants of the heroes. What line of rob- 
bery are you in, Mr. Duval ?” Dad was mad, 
but he told the guard he was now on the stock 
exchange, and so we maintained the reputation of 
the family. 


123 



Call again, Mr. Duval; always glad to serve any of the descend- 
ants of the heroes. 




PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

Then we hired horses and took a horse back 
ride through Rotten Row, where everybody in 
London that has the price, rides a horse, and no 
carriages are allowed. Dad. was an old cavalry 
man forty years ago, and he is stuck on his shape 
when he is on a horse, but he came near breaking 
up the horse back parade the day we went for the 
ride. The liveryman gave us two bob-tailed nags, 
a big one for dad and a small one for me, but 
they didn’t have any army saddle for dad, and he 
had to ride on one of these little English saddles, 
such as jockeys ride races on, and dad is so big 
where he sits on a saddle that you couldn’t see 
the saddle, and I guess they gave dad a hurdle 
jumper, because when we got right amongst the 
riders, men and women, his horse began to act 
up, and some one yelled, “ Tally-ho,” and that is 
something about fox hunting, not a coach, and 
the horse jumped a fence and dad rolled off over 
the bowsprit and went into a ditch of dirty water, 
and the horse went off across a field, and the po- 
liceman fished dad out of the ditch, and run him 
through a clothes wringer or something, and got 
him dried ou% and sent him to the hotel in an 
express wagon, and I rode my horse back to the 
liveryman and told him what happened to dad, 
and they locked me up in a box stall until some- 

125 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


body found the horse, ’cause they thought dad 
was a horse thief, and they held me for ransom. 
But dad came around before night and paid my 
ransom, and we were released. Dad says Rotten 
Row is rotten, all right enough, and by ginger 



it is, ’cause he has not got the smell of that ditch 
off his clothes yet. 

Now he has got a new idea, and that is to go 
to some country where there are bandits, different 
from the bandits here in London, and be cap- 

126 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


tured and taken to the mountain fastnesses, and 
held for ransom until our government makes a 
fuss about it, and sends warships after us. I tell 
dad it would be just our luck to have our govern- 
ment fail to try to get us, and the bandits might 
cut our heads off and stick them on a pole as a 
warning to people not to travel unless they had 
a ransom concealed about their clothes. But dad 
says he is out to see all the sights, and he is going 
to be ransomed before he gets home, if it takes 
every dollar our government has got. I think he 
is going to work the bandit racket when we get 
to Turkey, but, by ginger, he can leave me at a 
convent, because I don’t want one of those crooked 
sabers run into me and turned around like a 
corkscrew. Dad says I can stay in a harem 
while he goes to the mountains with the bandits, 
and I don’t know as I care, as they say a harem is 
the most interesting place in Turkey. You know 
the pictures we have studied in the old grocery, 
where a whole bunch of beautiful women are 
practicing using soap in a marble bath. 

Well, don’t you say anything to ma about it, 
but dad has got his foot in it clear up to the top 
button. It isn’t anything scandalous, though 
there is a woman at the bottom of it. You see, we 
used to know a girl that left home to go out into 

127 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

the world and earn her own living. She elocuted 
some at private parties and sanitariums, to enter- 
tain people that were daffy, and were on the 
verge of getting permanent bats in their belfry, 
and after a few years she got on the stage, and 
made a bunch of money, and went abroad. And 
then she had married a titled person, and every- 
body supposed she was a duchess, or a countess, 
and ma wanted us to inquire about her when we 
got over here. Ma didn’t want us to go and hunt 
her up to board with her, or anything, but just 
to get a glimpse of high life, and see if our poor 
little friend was doing herself proud in her new 
station in life. 

Gee, but dad found her, and she ain’t any more 
of a duchess than I am. Her husband is a 
younger son of a titled person, but there isn’t 
money enough in the whole family to wad a gun, 
and our poor girl is working in a shop, or store, 
selling corsets to support a lazy, drunken hus- 
band and a whole mess of children, and while 
she is seven removes from a duchess, she does 
not rank with the woman who washes her moth- 
er’s clothes at home. Gosh, but dad was hot when 
he found her, and after she told him about her 
128 



“ Her husband is a younger son of a titled person, but there 
isn’t money enough in the family to wad a gun.” 













































































. 





































- 







PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

situation in life he gave her a yellow-backed fifty- 
dollar bill, and came back to the hotel mad, and 
wanted to pack up and go somewhere else, where 
he didn’t know any titled persons. 

That night a couple of dukes came around to 
the hotel to sell dad some stock in a diamond mine 
in South Africa, and they got to talking about 
how English society- held over our crude Ameri- 
can society, until dad got an addition to the mad 
he had when he called on our girl, and when one 
of the dukes said America was being helped so- 
cially by the marriage of American women to 
titled persons, dad got a hot box, like a stalled 
freight train. 

Says dad, says he: “You Johnnies are a lot of 
confidence .me n, who live only to rope in rich 
American girls, so you can marry them and have 
their dads lift the mortgages on your ancestral 
estates, and put on tin roofs in place of the mort- 
gages, ’cause a mortgage will not shed rain, and 
you get their money and spend it on other wom- 
en.” One of the dukes turned red like a lobster, 
and I think he is a lobster, anyway, and he was 
going to make dad stop talking, but the duke 
didn’t know dad, and he continued. Says dad, 


129 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


says he: “I know a rich old man in the States, 
who made ten million dollars on pickles, or break- 
fast food, and he had a daughter that was so 
homely they couldn’t keep a clock going in the 
house. 

“She came over here and got exposed to a duke, 
and she had never been vaccinated, and the first 
her father knew she caught the duke, and came 
home, and he followed her. Say, he didn’t know 
enough to pound sand, and the old man got sev- 
eral doctors for her, but they couldn’t break up 
the duke fever, and finally the old pickle citizen 
asked him how much the mortgage was, and how 
much they could live on, and he bought her the 
duke, and sent them off, and the duke covered his 
castle with building paper, so it would hold water, 
and they set up housekeeping with a hundred ser- 
vants. Then the duke wanted a racing stable, 
after the baby came, and the old pickle man went 
over to see the baby, and it looked so much like 
the old man that he invested in a racing stable, 
and the servants bowed low to the old man and 
called him ‘Your ’ighness,’ and that settled the 
old pickle person, and he fell into the trap of 
building a townhouse in London. 

“Then he went home and made some more 
pickles, and the daughter cabled him to come 


130 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

right over, as they had been invited to entertain 
the king and a lot of other face cards in the pack. 
And the old man thought it would be great to get 
in the king row himself, so he shoveled a lot of 
big bills into some packing trunks and went over 
to fix up for the king. The castle had to be re- 



Dad drove the dukes out. 


decorated for about six miles, up one corridor 
and down the other, but Old Pickles stood the 
raise, because he thought it would be worth the 
money to be on terms of intimacy with a king. 

“Then when it was all ready, and the old man 
was going to stand at the front door and welcome 
the king, they made him go to his room, back 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

about a half a mile in the rear of the castle, and 
for two weeks old Pickles had his meals brought 
to his room, and when it was over, and his sen- 
tence had expired, he was let out, and all he saw 
of the grand entertainment to the crowned heads 
was a ravine full of empty wine bottles, a case 
of jimjams for a son-in-law, a case of nervous 
prostration for a daughter, and hydrophobia for 
himself. My old pickle friend has got, at this 
date, three million good pickle dollars invested 
in your d — d island, and all he has to show for it 
is a sick daughter, neglected by a featherhead of 
a husband, who will only speak to old pickles 
when he wants more money, and a grandchild 
that may die teething at any time. You are a 
nice lot of ducks to talk to me about your English 
society being better than our American civiliza- 
tion. You ge t,” and dad drove the dukes out. 

I think they are going to have dad arrested for 
treason. But don’t tell ma, ’cause she may think 
treason serious. Yours, 

Hennery. 


132 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XI. 

The Bay Boy Writes About Paris — Tells About the 
Trip Across the English Channel — Dad Feeds 
a Dog and Gets Arrested. 

Paris, France. — My Dear Uncle Ezra: Dad 
is in an awful state here, and I do not know what 
to do with him. We struck this town all in a 
heap, and the people seemed to be paralyzed so 
they couldn’t speak, except to make motions and 
make noises that we could not interpret. This is 
the first time dad and I have been in a place where 
nobody understood our language. Ordinarily we 
would take pleasure in teaching people to speak 
the English language, but in coming across the 
English channel dad and I both got something 
we never got on the water before. Ordinary sea- 
sickness is only an incident, that makes you wish 
you were dead — just temporary, but when it 
wears off you can enjoy your religion and victuals 
as well as ever, but the seasickness that the Eng- 
lish channel gives you is a permanent investment, 
like government bonds that you cut coupons off 
of. I ’spect we shall be sick always now, and 
worse every other day, like chills and fever. 

133 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


Say, a boat on the English channel does not 
roll, or pitch, at intervals, like a boat on ordinary 
water, but it does stunts like a broncho that has 



Looked at Dad in a tone of voice that meant trouble. 


been poisoned by eating loco-weeds, and goes into 
the air and dives down under, ahd shakes itself 
like a black bass with a hook in its mouth, and 


134 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


rolls over like a trained dog, and sits up on its 
hind legs and begs, and then walks on its fore 
paws, and seems to jump through hoops, and dig 
for woodchucks, and all the time the water boils 
like ’pollinarius, full of bubbles, and it gives you 
the hiccups to look at it, and it flows every way 
at the same time, and the wind comes from the 
fourteen quarters at once, and blows hot if you 
are too hot and want a cool breeze, and if you 
are too cold, and want a warm breeze to keep you 
alive, it comes right from the north pole, and you 
just perish in your tracks. 

Gee, but it is awful. When you get seasick on 
an ordinary ocean, you know where to locate the 
disease, and you know where to go for relief, and 
when you have got relieved you know that you 
are alive, but an English channel seasickness is as 
different from any other as an alcohol jag is dif- 
ferent from a champagne drunk. This English 
channel seasickness begins on your toes, and you 
feel as though the toenails were being pulled out 
with pincers, and the veins in your legs seem to 
explode, your arms wilt like lettuce in front of a 
cheap grocery, your head seems to be struck with 
a pile-driver and telescoped down into your spine, 
and your stomach feels as though you had swal- 
lowed a telephone pole with all of the cross arms 

135 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

and wires and glass insulators, and you wish 
lightning would strike you. Gosh, but dad was 
hot when he found that he was sick that way, 
and when we got ashore he wanted to kill the 
first man he met. 

He thinks that it is a crime for a man not to 
understand the English language, and when he 
tells what he wants, and the man he is talking 
to shrugs his shoulders and laughs, and brings 
him something else, he wants to pull his gun and 
begin to shoot up the town, and only for me he 
would have killed people before this, but now he 
takes it out in scowling at people who do not un- 
derstand him. Dad seems to think that if he 
cannot make a man understand what he says, all 
he has to do is to swear at the man, but there is 
no universal language of profanity, so the more 
dad swears the more the nervous Frenchman 
smiles, and acts polite. 

I think the French people are the politest folks 
I ever knew. If a Frenchman had to kick a 
person out of doors, he would wear a felt slipper, 
and after he had kicked you he would place his 
hand on his heart, and bow, and look so sorry, 
and hurt, that you would want to give him a 
tip. 

O, but this tipping business is what is breaking 
136 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

dad’s heart. I think if the servants would ar- 
range a syndicate to rob dad of two or three dol- 
lars a day, by pocket picking, or sneak thieving, 
he would overlook it, and say that as long as 
it was one of the customs of the country we 
should have to submit to it, but when he has paid 
his bill, with everything charged extra, and the 
servants line up and look appealingly, or mad, as 
the case may be, dad is the hardest man to loosen 
that ever was, but if they seem to look the other 
way, and not, apparently, care whether they get 
a cent or not, dad would go and hunt them up, 
and divide his roll with them. Dad is not what 
you would call a “tight wad,” if you let him shed 
his money normally, when he feels the loosening 
coming on, but you try to work him by bowing 
and cringing, and his American spirit gets the 
better of him, and he looks upon the servant as 
pretty low down. I have told him that the tip- 
ping habit is just as bad in America as in France, 
but he says in America the servant acts as though 
he never had such a thought as getting a tip, and 
when you give him a quarter or other tip he 
looks puzzled, as though he did not just recall 
what he had done to merit such treatment, but 
finally puts the money in his pocket with an air 
as though he would accept it in trust, to be given 

137 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

to some deserving person at the first opportunity, 
and then he smiles, and gets away, and blows in 
the tip for something wet and strong. 

I told dad if he would just ignore the servants^ 
as though he did not understand that they ex- 
pected a tip, that he would be all right, so when 
we got ready to move from the hotel to private 
rooms dad never gave any servant a tip. Well, 
I don’t know what the servants did to our bag- 
gage, but they must have marked it with a small- 
pox sign, or something, for nobody would touch 
it for several hours, but finally a baggage man 
took it and started for our apartments, and got 
lost, and didn’t show up for two days, and when 
it was finally landed on the sidewalk nobody 
would carry it upstairs, and dad and I had to lug 
it up two flights, and I thought dad would have 
apoplexy. 

We found a guide who could talk New Orleans 
English and he said it would cost three dollars to 
square it with the servants at the hotel, and have 
the boycott removed from our baggage, and dad 
paid it, and now he coughs up a tip every time 
he sees a servant look at him. He pays when he 
goes in a restaurant and when he comes out, and 
says he is cured of trying to reform the customs 
of anybody else’s country. 

138 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


We have engaged a guide to stay with us day 
and night. The guide took us out for a bat 
last night, and dad had the time of his life. Dad 
has drank a good deal of spiritous and malt liq- 
uors in his time, but I don't think he ever indulged 





And now he coughs up a tip every time he sees a servant look 
at him. 

much in champagne at three or four dollars a 
bottle at home. Maybe he has been saving him- 
self up till he got over here, where champagne 
is cheap and it takes several quarts to make you 
see angels. The guide took us to one of these 
bullyvards, where there are tables out on the side- 


139 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


walk, and you can eat and drink and look at the 
dukes and counts and dutchesses and things prom- 
enading up and down, flirting like sin, and we sat 
down to a table and ordered things to eat and 
drink, and dad looked like Uncle Sam, and felt his 
oats. 

When he had drank a few thimblefuls of ab- 
sinthe, and some champagne, and eat a plateful 
of frogs, he was just ripe for trouble. A woman 
and a man at an adjoining table had one of these 
white dogs that is sheared like a hedge fence, with 
spots of long hair left on in places, and dad coaxed 
the dog over to our table and began to feed him 
frogs' legs, and the woman began to talk French 
out loud, and look cross at dad, and the count that 
was with her came over to our table and looked 
at dad in a tone of voice that meant trouble, and 
said something sassy, and the guide said the man 
wanted to fight a duel because dad had contam- 
inated the woman's dog, and dad got mad and 
offered to wipe out the whole place, and he got up 
with a champagne bottle and looked defiance at 
the count, and the waiters began to scatter, when 
the woman came up to dad and begged him not to 
hurt the count, and as she spoke broken English 
dad could understand her, and she looked so beau- 
tiful, and her eyes were filled with tears, and dad 


140 



PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


relented and said : “ Don’t cry, dear, I won’t 

hurt the little runt.” She was so glad dad was 
not going to kill the count that she threw her- 
self into his arms and thanked dear America for 
producing such a grand citizen, such a brave man 
as dad, who could forego the pleasure of killing a 
poor, weak man who had insulted him, particular- 
ly as dad’s wild Indian ancestry made it hard 
for him to refrain from blood. 

Well, dad’s fade was a study, as he braced up 
and held that 150 pounds of white meat in his 
arms, with all the people looking on, and he 
seemed proud and heroic, and he stroked her hair 
and told her not to worry, and finally she hied her- 
self away from dad and the count took her away, 
and they went up the bullyvard, and after all was 
quiet again dad said: “Hennery, let this be a 
lesson to you. When you are tempted to com- 
mit a rash act and avenge an insult in blood, stop 
and think of the sorrow and shame that will come 
to you if you draw your gun too quick, and have 
a widow on your hands as the result. Suppose 
I had killed that shrimp, the face of his widow 
would have haunted me always, and I would have 
wanted to die. Don’t ever kill anybody, my boy, 
if you can settle a dispute by shaking the dice.” 

Well, dad ordered some more wine, and as he 


142 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


drank it, he allowed the populace to admire him 
and say things about the great American million- 
aire, who spent money like water and was too 
brave to fight. Then dad called for his check to 
pay his bill, and when he felt in his pocket for his 
roll of bills, he hadn't a nickel and the woman, 
when she was in his arms, weeding with one hand, 
had gone through dad's pockets with the other. 
Dad felt for his watch, to see what time it was, 
and his watch was gone, and the waiter was wait- 
ing for the money and dad tried to explain that he 
had been buncoed, and the head waiter came and 
begun to act sassy, and then they called a police- 
man to stay by us till -the money was produced, 
and everybody at the other tables laughed, and 
dad turned blue, and I thought he would have a 
fit. Finally, the guide began to talk, and the re- 
sult was that a policeman went home with us, and 
dad found money enough to pay the bill, but he 
talked language that caused the landlady to ask 
us to find a new place. 

The next morning the guide showed up with 
an officer who had a warrant for dad for hugging 
a woman in a public cafe, and it seemed as though 
we were in for it, but the guide said he could set- 
tle the whole business by paying the officer $20, 
and dad paid it and I think the guide and the offi- 

143 



PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

cer divided the money. Say, this is the greatest 
town we have struck yet for excitement, and I 
guess dad will not have a chance to think of his 
sickness. 

This morning we went into a big department 
store, and, by gosh ! we found the count that dad 
was going to fight was a floor-walker, and the 
countess was behind a counter selling soap. When 
dad saw the count leering at him, he put his hand 
on his pistol pocket and yelled a regular cowboy 
yell, and the count rushed down into the base- 
ment, the soap countess fainted, and the police 
took dad to the police station, and all day the 
guide and I have been trying to get him out on 
bail. If we get dad out of this we are going to 
put a muzzle on him. Well, if anyone asks you 
if I am having much of a time abroad, you can 
tell them the particulars. 

P. S. — We got dad out for $20 and costs, and 
he says he will blow Paris up before night. We 
are going up to the top of the Eiffel tower this 
afternoon, to count our money, as dad dassent 
take out his pocketbook anywhere on the ground 
for fear of being robbed. Yours full of frogs, 

Hennery, 


145 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XII. 

The Bad Boy’s Second Letter from Paris — Dad Poses 
as a Mormon Bishop and Has to Be Rescued — 
They Climb the Eiffel Tower and the 
Old Man Gets Converted. 

Paris, France. — Old Pardner in Crime: I got 
your letter, telling me about the political cam- 
paign that is raging at home, and when I read it 
to dad he wanted to go right out and fill up on 
campaign whisky and yell for his presidential can- 
didate, but he couldn’t find any whisky, so he has 
not tried to carry any precincts of Paris for our 
standard-bearer. 

There is something queer about the liquor here. 
There is no regular campaign beverage. At home 
you can select a drink that is appropriate for any 
stage of a campaign. When the nominations are 
first made you are not excited and beer and cheese 
sandwiches seem to fit the case A little later, 
when the orators begin to come out into the 
open and shake their hair, you take cocktails 
and your eyes begin to resemble those of a caged 
rat, and you are ready to quarrel with an oppon- 
ent. The next stage in the campaign is the 

146 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


whisky stage, and when you have got plenty of 
it the campaign may be said to be open, and you 
wear black eyes and lose your teeth, and you 
swear strange oaths and smell of kerosene, and 
only sleep in the morning. Then election comes 
and if your side wins you drink all kinds of things 
at once for a week, shout hoarsely and then go 
to the Keeley cure, but if your party loses you 
stay home and take a course of treatment for ner- 
vous prostration and say you will never mix up in 
another campaign. 

Here in France it is different. The people have 
nervous prostration to start on, start a campaign 
on champagne, wind up on absinthe, and after the 
votes are counted go to an insane asylum. I do 
not know what first got dad to drink absinthe 
and I don’t know what it is, but it looks like soap 
suds, tastes like seed cookies and smells like 
vermifuge. But it gets there just the same and 
the result of drinking it is about the same as the 
result of drinking anything in France — it makes 
you want to hug somebody. 

At home when a man gets full of whisky, he 
wants to hug the man he drinks with and weep on 
his collar, and then hit him on the head with a 
bottle ; but here every kind of drink puts the drink- 
er in condition to want to hug. Dad says he 

147 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

never knew he had a brain until he learned to 
drink absinthe, but now he can close his eyes and 
see things worse than any mince pie nightmare, 
and when we go out among people he never sees 
a man at all, but when a woman passes along, 
dad’s eyes begin to take turns winking at them 
and it is all I can do to keep him from proposing 
marriage to every woman he sees. 

I thought I would break him of this woman 
foolishness, so I told everybody dad was a Mor- 
mon bishop, and had a grand palace at Salt Lake 
City, and owned millions of gold mines and tab- 
ernacles and wanted to marry a thousand women 
and take them to Utah and place them at the head 
of homes of their own, and he would just call once 
or twice a week and leave bags of gold for his 
wives to spend. A newspaper reporter, that could 
talk English, wrote a piece for a paper about 
dad wanting to marry a whole lot and he said 
life in Utah was better than a Turkish harem, 
ca'use the wives of a Mormon bishop did not have 
to be locked up and watched by Unix, but could 
flirt and blow in money and go out to dances and 
have just as much fun as though they lived in 
Newport, and had got divorces from millionaires, 
and he said any woman who wanted to marry a 
148 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


Mormon bishop could meet dad on the bullyvard 
near a certain monument, on a certain day. 

I was on to it, with the reporter, and we hired 



a carriage and went to the bullyvard, just at the 
time the newspaper said and I put a big red badge 
on dad's breast, with the word “ Bishop" on it, and 


149 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

dad had been drinking absinthe and he thought 
the badge was a kind of sign of nobility. Well, 
you’d adide to see the bunch of women that were 
there to meet dad. “ What’s the matter here? ” 
said dad, as he saw the crowd of women, looking 
like they were there in answer to an advertise- 
ment for nurses. I told dad to stand up in the 
carriage, like Dowie does in Chicago, and hold 
out his hands and say : “ Bless you, my chil- 

dren,” and when dad got up to bless them, the re- 
porter and I got out of the carriage, and the re- 
porter, which could talk French, said for all the 
women who wanted to be Mormon wives to get 
into the carriage with the bishop and be sealed 
for life. 

Well, sir, you’d a thought it was a remnant 
sale! More than a dozen got into the carriage 
with dad, and about 400 couldn’t get in, but when 
the scared driver started up the horses, they all 
followed the carriage, and then the mounted po- 
lice surrounded the whole bunch and moved them 
off towards the police station, and dad under the 
wagonload of females, each one trying to get the 
nearest to him, so as to be his favorite wife. 

It got noised around that a foreign potent-ate 
had been arrested with his whole harem for con- 
duct unbecoming to a potent-ate, and so when we 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


got to the jail dad had to be rescued from his 
wives, and they were driven into a side street by 
the police, and dad was locked up to save his life. 
The reporter and I went to the jail to get him 
out, but we had to buy a new suit of clothes for 
him, as everything was torn of? him in the Mor- 
mon rush. Dad was a sight when we found him 



in jail, and he thought his bones were broken, 
and he wanted to know what was the cause of 
his sudden popularity with the fair sex, and I 
told him it all came from his looking so con- 
founded distinguished, and his flirting with wom- 
en. He said he would swear he never looked at 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


one of those women in a tone of voice that would 
deceive a Sunday school teacher, and he felt as 
though he was being misunderstood in France. 
We told him the only way to get out of jail was to 
say he was a crowned head from Oshkosh, trav- 
eling incog, and when he began to stand on his 
dignity and demand that a messenger be sent for 
the president of France, to apologize for the 
treatment he had received, the jailer and police 
begged his pardon and we dressed him up in his 
new clothes and got him out, and we went to 
the Eiffel tower to get some fresh air. 

I suppose you have seen pictures of the Eiffel 
tower, on the advertisements of breakfast food in 
your grocery, but you can form no idea of the 
height and magnificence of the tower by studying 
advertisements. You may think that the pictures 
you see of world events on your cans of baked 
beans and maple syrup and soap, give you the 
benefit of foreign travel, but it does not. You 
have got to see the real thing or you are not fit 
to even talk about what you think you have seen. 
You remember that Ferris wheel at the Chicago 
world’s fair, and how we thought it was the great- 
est thing ever made of steel, so high that it made 
us dizzy to look to the top of it, and when we 
went up on the wheel we thought we could see 

152 



“ When the guide tells you the flies crawling around on the 
ground are men and women you think he has been drinking.” 





. 






























































































PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


the world, from Alaska to South Africa, and we 
marveled at the work of man and prayed that we 
be permitted to get down off that wheel alive, and 
not be spilled down through the rarified Chicago 
atmosphere and flattened on the pavement so thin 
we would have to be scraped up off the pavement 
with a case knife, like a buckwheat cake that 
sticks to the griddle. 

You remember, old man, how you cried when 
our sentence to ride in the Ferris wheel expired, 
and the jailer of the wheel opened the cell and 
let us out, and you said no one would ever get you 
to ride again on anything that you couldn't jump 
out of if it balked, or you got wheels in your head 
and chunks of things came up to your Adam's 
apple and choked you. Well, cross my heart, if 
that Ferris wheel, that looked so big to us, would 
make a main spring for the Eiffel tower. The 
tower is higher than a kite, and when you get near 
it and try to look up to the top, you think it is 
a joke, and that really no one actually goes up 
to the top of it. You see some flies up around the 
top of it, and when the guide tells you the flies 
crawling around there are men and women, you 
think the guide has been drinking. 

But dad and I and the guide paid our money, 
got into an elevator and began to go up. After 

153 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


the thing had been going up awhile dad said he 
wouldn’t go up more than a mile or so at first, and 
asked the man to let him off at the 3,000-foot 
level, but the elevator man said dad had got to 
take all the degrees and dad said : “ Let her 

went,” and after an hour or so we got to the 
top. 

Gee! but I thought dad would fall dead right 
there, when he looked off at Paris and the world 
beyond. The flies we had seen at the top before 
starting had changed, to human beings, all look- 
ing pale and scared, and the human beings on 
the ground had changed into flies and bugs, for 
all you could see of a man on the ground was his 
feet with a flattened plug hat someway fastened 
on the ankles, and a woman looked like a spoon- 
ful of raspberry jam dropped on the pavement, 
or a splash of current jelly moving on the ground 
in a mysterious way. I do not know as the Eiffel 
tower was intended to act as a Keeley cure, but 
of the 50 people who went up with us, half of them 
were so full their back teeth were floating, in- 
cluding dad and the guide, but when we got to 
the top and they got a view of the awful height 
to which we had come, it seemed as though every 
man got sober at once, and their tongues seemed 
to cleave to the roof of their mouths. All they 

154 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


could do was to look off at the city and the view 
in the distance, and choke up, and look sorry 
about something. 

I couldn’t help thinking of what sort of a pulp 
a man would be if he fell off the top of the tower 
and struck a fat woman on the pavement, cause 



Dad went up to her, took out a five dollar bill, and put it in the 
tambourine of the lassie. 

it seemed to me you couldn’t tell which was fat 
woman and which was man. I never saw such a 
change in a man as there was in dad, after he 
got his second wind and got his voice working. 
He looked like a man who had made up his mind 
to lead a different life and begin right there. 

155 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


There was a Salvation Army man and woman in 
the crowd and dad went up to them. He took out 
a five-dollar bill and put it in the tambourine of 
the lassie, and said to the man and woman: 
“ Now, look a here, I want to join your church, 
and if you have got the facilities for giving me 
the degrees, you can sign me as a Christian right 
now. I have been a bad man, and never thought 
I needed the benefits of religious training, but 
since I got up here, so near Heaven, in an eleva- 
tor which I will bet $10 will break and kill us all 
before we get down to Paris, I want you to pre- 
pare me for the hereafter quick.” 

Some of the other fellows laughed at dad, and 
the Salvation Army people looked as though dad 
was drunk, but he continued: “ You can laugh 
and be jammed, but Pll never leave this place un- 
til I am a pious man, and you Salvation Army 
people have got to enlist me in your army, for I 
am scared plum to death. Go ahead and convert 
me, while we wait.” The Salvation Army cap- 
tain put his hand on dad’s head, the girl held out 
the tambourine for another contribution, and dad 
felt a sweet peace come over him, and we went 
down in the elevator and took a hack to the hotel, 
and dad's lips worked as though in pain. H. 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XIII. 

The Bad Boy’s Dad and a Man from Dakota Frame 
Up a Scheme to Break the Bank, But They Go 
Broke — The Party in Trouble. 

Monte Carlo. — Dear Uncle: I blush to write 
the name, Monte Carlo, at the head of a letter 
to anyone that is a Christian, or who believes in 
honesty and decency, and earning a living by the 
sweat of one's brow, for this place is the limit. 
If I should write anybody a letter from South 
Clark street, Chicago, the recipient would know 
I had gone wrong, and was located in the midst 
of a bad element, and the inference would be 
that I was the worst fakir, robber, hold-up man 
or assassin in the bunch. 

The inference you must draw from the head- 
ing of this letter is that dad and I have taken 
all the degree of badness and are now winding 
up our career by taking the last degree, before 
passing in our chips and committing suicide. Do 
you know what this place is, old man ? Monaco 
is a principality, about six miles square, ruled by 
a prince, and the whole business of the country, 

157 



Dad and the man from Dakota going to break the bank. 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

for it is a “ country ” the same as though it had a 
king, is gambling. They have all the different 
kinds of gambling, from chuck-a-luck at two bits 
to roulette at a million dollars a minute. What 
started dad to come to Monte Carlo is more than 
I know, unless it was a new American he has got 
acquainted with, a fellow from North Dakota, 
that dad met at a sort of dance that he did not 
t^^ me to. It seems there is a place in Paris 
where they go to see men and women dance — one 
of those dances where they kick so high that their 
feet hit the gas fixtures. 

Well, all I know about it is that one Wednes- 
day night dad said he felt as though it was his 
duty to go to prayer meeting, so he could say 
when he got home that in all the frivolities of a 
trip abroad, even in wicked Paris, he never neg- 
lected his church duties. I never was stuck on 
going to prayer meeting, so dad let me stay at 
the hotel and play pool with the cash register boy 
in the barroom, and dad took a hymn book and 
went out, looking pious as I ever saw him. 

My, what a difference there was in dad in the 
morning. I woke up about daylight, and dad 
came into the room with a strange man, with 
spinach on his chin, and they began to dance, like 
they had seen the people dance at the show where 

159 




PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


they had passed the evening. They were un- 
dressed, except their underclothes, which were 
these combination suits, so when a man gets into 
them he is sealed up like a bologna, and he has 
to have help when he wants to get out to take a 
bath, and he has to have an outsider button him 
in with a button hook. Gee, I would rather be a 
sausage and done with it! Well, dad and this 
man from Dakota kicked high until dad caught by 
the ankle on a gas bracket, and the strange man 
got me up out of bed to help unloosen dad and 
get him down before he was black in the face. 
Finally we got dad down and then the two old 
codgers began to discuss a proposition to go to 
Monte Carlo to break the bank. 

The Dakota man agreed that Americans had 
no right to be spending their own money doing 
Europe, when their genius was equal to the task 
of acquiring the money of the less intelligent for- 
eigners. Fie said they could go to Monte Carlo 
and by a system of gambling which he had used 
successfully in the Black Hills they could carry 
away all the money they could pile into sacks. 
The man said he would guarantee to break the 
bank if dad would put his money against the Da- 
kota man’s experience as a gambler, and they 
would divide the proceeds equally. Dad bit like 

161 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


a bass. He said he had always had an element 
of adventure in his make-up, and had always liked 
to take chances, and from what he had heard of 
the fabulous sums won and lost at Monte Carlo, 



There was to be some fun besides the- winning of money, because 
they talked of going out in the park and on the terraces 
* * * and seeing the poor devils who had gone broke 

commit suicide. 

lie could see that if a syndicate could be formed 
that would win most of the time, he could see that 
there was more money in it than in any manu- 

162 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD • 

facturing enterprise, and he was willing to finance 
the scheme. 

The Dakota man fairly hugged dad, and he 
told dad in confidence that they two could divide 
up money enough to make them richer than they 
ever dreamed of, and all the morning they dis- 
cussed the plan, and made a list of things they 
would need to get away with the money. They 
provided themselves with canvas sacks to carry 
away the gold, and dad drew all his money out 
of the hank, and that evening we took a train 
for Monte Carlo. All the way here dad and his 
new friend chuckled over the sensation they would 
make among the gamblers, and I became real in- 
terested in the scheme. There was to be some 
fun besides the winning of the money, because 
they talked of going out in the park and on the 
terraces when they were tired of winning mon- 
ey, and seeing the poor devils who had gone broke 
commit suicide, as that is said to be one of the 
features of the place. 

Well, we got a suite of rooms and the first day 
we looked over the place, and ate free banquets 
and saw how the people dressed, and just looked 
prosperous and showed money on the slightest 
provocation, and got the hang of things. Dad 
was to go in the big gambling room in the after- 

163 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


noon with his pockets fairly dropsical with mon- 
ey, and the Dakota man was to do the betting, 
and dad was to hold one of the canvas bags, and 
when it was full we were to take it to our room, 
and quit gambling for awhile, to give the bank a 
chance to raise more money. Dad insisted that 
his partner should lose a small bet once in awhile, 
so the bank should not get on to the fact that we 
had a cinch. 

After luncheon we entered the big gambling 
room, in full-dress suits, and, by gosh ! it was like 
a king's reception. There were hundreds of men 
and women, dressed for a party, and it did not 
seem like a gambling hell, except that there were 
piles of gold as big as stoves, on all the tables, and 
the guests were provided with silver rakes, with 
long handles, to rake in the money. Dad said in 
a whisper to the Dakota man : “ What is the use 
of taking the trouble to run a gold mine, and get 
all dirtied up digging dirty nuggets, when you 
can get nice, clean gold, all coined, ready to spend, 
by betting right? ” And then dad turned to me 
and he said : “ Hennery, don't let the sight of 

this wealth make you avaricious. Don't be purse- 
proud when you find that your poor father, after 
years of struggle against adversity, and the 
machinations of designing men, has got next to 

164 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


the Pierpont Morgan class and has money to buy 
railroads. Don’t get excited when we begin to 
bag the money, but just act as though it was a 
regular thing with us to salt down our gold for 
winter, the same as we do our pork.” 

A count, or a duke, gave us nice seats, and 
rakes to haul in the money ; a countess, with a low- 
necked dress, winked at dad when he reached 
into his pistol pocket and brought out a roll of 
bills and handed them to the Dakota man, who 
bought $500 worth of red chips, and when the 
man looked the roulette table over and put about 
a pint of chips on the red, dad choked up so he 
was almost black in the face, and began to per- 
spire so I had to wipe my face with a handker- 
chief ; the gambler rolled the wheel and when the 
ball stopped on the red, and dad did the raking 
and raked in a quart of chips, and dad shook 
hands with the Dakota man and said : “ Pard, 

we have got ’em on the run,” and reached for his 
sack to put in the first installment of acquired 
wealth, and the low-necked countess smiled a 
ravishing smile on dad, and dad looked as though 
he owned a brewery, and the Dakota man twisted 
his chin whiskers and acted like he was sorry 
for the Monte Carlo bank, I just got so faint with 
joy that I almost cried. 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


To think we ha<i skinned along as economical- 
ly as possible all our lives, and never made much 
money, and now, through this Dakota genius, and 
this Monte Carlo opportunity, we had wealth rak- 
ing in by the bushel, made me feel great, and I 
wondered why more people had not found out 
this faraway place, where people could become 
rich and prosperous in a day, if they had the 
nerve. I tell you, old man, it was great, and I 
was going to cable you to sell out your grocery 
for what you could get at forced sale and come 
here with the money, gamble and become a mil- 
lionaire. 

Monte Carlo (the next day). — My Dear Uncle 
Ezra : I do not know how to write you the sequel 
to this tragedy. After our Dakota partner, with 
the Black Hills system of beating a roulette game, 
had won the first bet, he never guessed the right 
color again, and dad had no more use for the 
rake. Every time he bet and lost, he would reach 
out to dad for more money, and dad would reach 
into another pocket and dig up another roll, and 
the countess would laugh and dad had to act as 
though he enjoyed losing money. 

It was about dark when dad had fished up the 
last hundred dollars and it was gone before dad 
could wink back to the countess, then the Dakota 

1 66 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


man looked at dad for more, and dad shook his 
head and said it was all off, and they looked at 
each other a minute, and then we all three got up 
and went out in the park to see the people who 
had gone broke commit suicide, but there was 
not a revolver shot and dad and the Dakota man 
sat down on a seat and I looked at the moon. 



He would reach out to Dad for more money , and Dad would 
reach into another pocket and dig up another roll. 

Dad looked at the Dakota man and said: “You 
started me in all right. What happened to your 
system ?” The Dakota man was silent for a 
moment, and then he pointed to me and said: 
“ That imp of yours crossed his fingers every 
time I bet, except the first time.” Dad called me 
to him, and he said: “Hennery, let this be a 

167 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

lesson to you. Never to cross your fingers. You 
have ruined your dad,” and he turned his pockets 
inside out, and hadn’t change for a dollar note, 
and he gave me the empty sack to carry, and we 
went to our suite of rooms, knowing we would be 
fired out into the cold world. 

It will take a week to get money from the 
slates, and we may be sent to the work house, as 
we are broke, and haven’t got the means even to 
commit suicide. Don’t tell ma. Yours, 

Hennery. 


i 68 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XIV., 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Have an Automobile 
Ride- — They Run Over a Peasant— Climb “Gla- 
ziers”— Dad Falls Over a Precipice, But 
Is Rescued by the Guides After a 
Hard Time of It. 

Geneva, Switzerland. — My Dear Old Man : By 
ginger, but I would like to be home now. I have 
had enough of foreign travel ; I don’t see what is 
the use of traveling, to see people of foreign coun- 
tries, when you can go to any large city in Amer- 
ica, and find more people belonging to any for- 
eign country than you can find by going to that 
country, and they know a confounded sight more. 
Take the Russians in New York, the Norwegians 
of Minnesota, the Italians of Chicago, and the 
Germans of Milwaukee, and they can talk Eng- 
lish, and you can find out all about their own 
countries by talking with them, but you go to 
their countries and the natives don’t know that 
there is such a language as the United States 
language, and they laugh at you when you ask 
questions. I am sick of the whole business, and 

169 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


would give all I ever expect to be worth, to be 
home right now, with my skates sharp. 

I would like to open the door of your old gro- 
cery, and take one long breath and die right there 
on the doorstep, rather than to live in luxury 
in any foreign country. Do you know, I some- 
times go into a grocery store abroad, and smell 
around, in order to get my thoughts on dear old 
America, but nothing abroad smells as the same 
thing does in our country. If I could get one 
more smell of that keg of sauerkraut back of your 
counter, when it is ripe enough to pick, I think I 
would break right down and cry for joy. Of 
course I have smelled sauerkraut over here, but 
it all seems new and tame compared to yours. 
It may be the kraut here is not aged enough to 
be good, but yours is aged enough to vote and 
sticks to your clothes. Gee, but I just ache to get 
into your grocery and eat things, and smell smells, 
and then lay down on the counter with the cit 
with my head on a pile of wrapping paper and 
go to sleep and wake up in America, an Ameri- 
can citizen, that no king or queen can tell to 
“ hush up ” and take off my hat when I want my 
hat on. 

You may wonder how we got out of Monte 
Carlo, when we had lost every cent we had gam- 

1'70 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


bling. Well, we wondered about it ail night, and 
had our breakfast sent up to our room, and had 
it charged, expecting that when the bill came in 
we would have to jump into the ocean, as we 
had no gun to kiil ourselves with. Just after 
breakfast a duke, or something, came to our 



room, and dad said it was all off, and he called 
upon the Dakota man to make a speech on poli- 
tics, while dad and I skipped out. We thought 
the duke, who was the manager of the hotel, 
would not understand the speech, and would think 
we were great people, who had got stranded. 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

The Dakota man started in on a democratic 
speech that he used to deliver in the campaign of 
’96, and in half an hour the duke held up his 
hands, and the Dakota man let up on the speech. 
Then the duke took out a roll of bills and said: 
“ Ze shentlemen is what you call bust. Is it not 
so?" Dad said he could bet his life it was so. 
Then the duke handed the roll of bills to dad, and 
said it was a tribute from the prince of Monaco, 
and that we were his guests, and when our stay 
was at an end, automobiles would be furnished 
Tor us to go to Nice, where we could cable home 
for funds, and be happy. 

Well, when the duke left us, dad said: 
“ Wouldn’t that skin you? ” and he gave the Da- 
kota man one of the bills to try on the bartender, 
and when he found the money was good we or- 
dered an automobile and skipped out for Nice. 
The chauffeur could not understand English, so 
we talked over the situation and decided that the 
only way to be looked upon as genuine automo- 
bilists would be to wear goggles and look pros- 
perous and mad at everybody. W e took turns look- 
ing mad at everybody we passed on the road, and 
got it down so fine that people picked up rocks 


172 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


after we had passed, and threw them at us, and 
then we knew that we were succeeding in being 
considered genuine, rich automobile tourists. 

After we had succeeded for an hour or two in 
convincing the people that we were properly 
heartless and purse proud, dad said the only thing 
we needed to make the jtrip a success was to run 
over somebody. He said nearly all the American 
automobile tourists in Europe had killed some- 
body and had been obliged to settle and support 
a family or two in France or Italy, and they 
were prouder of it than they would be if they en- 
dowed a university, or built a church, and he said 
he trusted our chauffeur would not be too care- 
ful in running through the country, but would 
at least cripple some one. 

Well, just before we got to Nice, and darkness 
was settling down on the road, the chauffeur blew 
his horn, there was a scream that would raise hair 
on Horace Greeley’s head, the automobile stopped, 
and there was a bundle of dusty old clothes, with 
an old woman done up in them, and we jumped 
out and lifted her up, and there we were, the 
woman in a faint, the peasants gathering around 
us with scythes and rakes and clubs, demanding 

173 


• PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

our lives. The bloody-faced woman was taken 
into a home, the crowd held us, until finally a 
doctor came, and after examining the woman 
said she might live, but it would be a tight 
squeeze. We wanted to go on, but we didn't want 
to be. cut open with a scythe, so finally a man, 



Dad got down on his knees. 


who said he was the husband of the woman, came 
out with a gun, dad got down on his knees and 
tried to say a prayer, the Dakota man held up 
both hands like it was a stage being held up, and 
I cried. Finally the chauffeur said, in broken 
English, that the husband would settle for $400, 

174 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


because he could pay the funeral expenses, get 
another wife for half the money and have some- 
thing left to lay up for Christmas. As the man’s 
gun was pointed at dad, he quit praying and gave 
up the money and agreed to send $50 a month for 
1 1 years, until the oldest child was of age. 

Well, we got away alive, got into Nice, and the 
chauffeur started back and we cabled home for 
money to be sent to Geneva, Switzerland. But, 
say ; you have not heard the sequel. A story that 
has a sequel is always the best, and I hope to die 
if the police of Nice didn’t tell us that we were 
buncoed by that old woman and that the chauffeur 
was in the scheme and got part of dad’s money. 
The way they do it is to wait till dark, and then 
roll the woman in the dust and put some red ink 
on her face, and she pretends to be run over, and 
the doctor is hired by the month, and they aver- 
age $500 a night, playing that game on automo- 
bile tourists from America. After the woman 
is run over every night, and the money is col- 
lected, and the victims have been allowed to go on 
their way, the whole community gathers at the 
house of the injured woman and they have a cele- 
bration and a dance, and probably our chauffeur 
got back to the house that night in time to enjoy 
the celebration. I suppose thousands of Ameri- 

175 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


cans are paying money for killing people that 
never got a scratch. 

Say, we think in America that we have plenty 
of ways to rob the tenderfoot, but they give us 
cards and spades and little casino and beat us 
every time. Dad wanted to hire a hack and go 
back and finish that old woman with an ax, be- 
cause he said he had a corpse coming to him, but 
the police told him he could be arrested for think- 
ing murder, and that he was a dangerous man, 
and that they would give him 12 hours to get out 
of France, and so we bought tickets for Switzer- 
land, though what we came here for I don’t know, 
only dad said it was a republic like America and 
he wanted to breathe the free air of mountains in 
the home of the Switzerkase. 

Well, anybody can have Switzerland if they 
want it. I will sell my interest cheap. The first 
three days we were here everybody wanted us to 
go out on the lake, said to be the most beautiful 
lake in the world, and we sailed on it, and rowed 
on it, and looked down into the clear water where 
it is said you can see a corpse on the bottom 
of the lake 100 feet down. We hadn’t lost any 
corpse, except the corpse of that old woman we 
run over at Nice, but we wanted to get the worth 
of our money, so we kept looking for days, but 

176 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


the search for a corpse becomes tame after awhile, 
and we gave it up. All we saw in the bottom of 
the lake was a cow, but no man can weep properly 
over the remains of a cow, and dad said they 
could go to the deuce with their corpses, and we 



Dad dropped about a hundred feet with the rope on him. 

just camped at the hotel till our money came. Say, 
that lake they talk so much about is no better than 
lakes all over Wisconsin, and there are no black 
bass or muskellunges in it. 

The tourists here are just daffy about climbing 
mountains and glaziers, and they talk about it all 


177 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


the time, and I could see dad’s finish. They told 
him that no American that ever visited Switzer- 
land would be recognized when he got home if he 
had not climbed the glaziers, so dad arranged for 
a trip up into the sky. We went ioo miles or 
so on le cars, passing along valleys where all 
the cows wear tea bells, and it sounds like chimes 
in the distance. It is beautiful in Switzerland, 
but the cheese is something awful. A piece of 
native Swiss cheese would break up a family. 

At night we arrived at a station where we hired 
guides and clothes, and things, and the next 
morning we started. Dad wanted me to stay at 
the station a couple of days, while he was gone, 
and play with the goats, but I told him if there 
were any places in the mountains or glaziers any 
more dangerous than Paris or Monte Carlo, I 
wanted to visit them, so he let me go. Well, we 
were rigged up for discovering the north pole, 
and had alpenstocks to push ourselves up with, 
and the guides had ropes to pull us up when we 
got to places where we couldn’t climb. I could 
get along all right, but they had dad on a rope 
most of the time pulling him until his tongue 
run out and his face turned blue. But dad was 
game, and don’t you forget it. 

Before noon we got on top of a glazier, which 

i 7 8 





“ I told him he would probably have to remain there until 

spring opened/' 





PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


is the ice of a frozen river, that moves all the 
time, sliding towards the sea. There was noth- 
ing but a hard winter, in summer, to the experi- 
ence, and we would have gone back the same 
night, only dad slipped down a crevice about ioo 
feet with the rope on him, and the two guides 
couldn’t pull him up, and we had to send a lunch 
down to him on the rope and one of the guides 
had to go back to the village for help to get dad 
up. Well, sir, I think dad was nearer dead than 
he ever was before, but they sent down a bottle 
of brandy, and when he drank some of it the snow 
began to -melt and he was warm enough to use bad 
language. 

He yelled to, me that this was the limit and 
wanted to know how long they were going to keep 
him there. I yelled to him that one of the guides 
had gone for help to pull him out, and he said for 
them to order a yoke of oxen. I told him that 
probably he would have to remain there until 
spring opened and that I was going back to Amer- 
ica and leave him there, and he better pray. I 
don’t know whether dad prayed, down there in 
the bowels of the mountains, but he didn’t pray 
when help came, and they finally hauled him up. 
His breath was gone, but he gave those guides 
some language that would set them to thinking 

179 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

if they could have understood him, and finally 
we started down the mountain. They kept the 
rope on dad and every little while he would slip 
and slide ioo feet or so down the mountain on 
his pants, and the snow would go up his trousers 
legs clear to his collar, and the exercise made him 
so hot that the steam came out of his clothes, and 
he looked like a locomotive wrecked in a snow 
bank blowing off steam. 

It became dark and I expected we would be 
killed, but before midnight we got to the station 
and changed our clothes and paid off the guides 
and took a train back. Dad said to me, as we got 
on the cars : “ Now, Hennery, I have done this 

glazier stunt, just to show you that a brave man, 
whatever his age, is equal to anything they can 
propose in Europe, but by ginger, this settles it, 
and now I want to go where things come easier. 
I am now going to Turkey and see how the Turks 
worry along. Are you with me?” “ You bet 
your life,” says I. Yours truly, 

Hennery. 


180 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XV. 

Dad Plays He Is an Anarchist — They Give Alms to 
the Beggars and the Bad Boy Ducks a Gon- 
dolier and His Dad in the Grand Canal. 

Venice, Italy. — My Dear Old Chumireno: Dad 
couldn’t get out of Switzerland quick enough 
after he got thawed out the day after we climbed 
the glaziers. We found that almost all the tour- 
ists in Geneva were there because they did not 
want to go home and say they had not visited 
Switzerland, so they just jumped from one place 
to another. The people who stay there any length 
of time are like the foreign residents of Mexico, 
who are wanted for something they have done at 
home, that is against the law. There are more 
anarchists in Geneva than anything else, and they 
look hairy and wild eyed, and they plot to kill 
kings and drink beer out of two quart jars. 

When we found that more attention was paid 
to men suspected of crime in their own countries, 
and men who were believed to be plotting to as- 
sassinate kings, dad said it would be a good joke 
if a story should get out that he was suspected 
of being connected with a syndicate that wanted 

181 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


to assassinate some one, so I told a fellow that I 
got acquainted with that the fussy old man that 
tried to ride a glazier without any saddle or stir- 
rup was wanted for attempting to blow up the 
president of the United States by selling him 



Dad and the anarchists reveled till almost morning. 

baled hay soaked in a solution of dynamite and 
nitro-glycerine. 

Say, they will believe anything in Switzerland. 
It wasn’t two hours before long-haired people 
were inviting dad to dinners, and the same night 
he was taken to a den where a lot of anarchists 
were reveling, and dad reveled till almost morn- 
ing. When he came back to the hotel he said his 

182 


PECK'S BAD BOY ABROAD 


hosts got all the money he had with him, through 
some game he didn’t understand, but he under- 
stood it was to go into a fund to support deserv- 
ing anarchists and dynamiters. He said when 
they found out he was a suspected assassin noth- 
ing was too good for him. He said they wanted 
to know how he expected to kill a president by 
soaking baled hay in explosives, and dad said it 
came to him suddenly to tell them that the presi- 
dent rode on horseback a good deal, and he 
thought if a horse was filled with baled hay and 
nitro-glycerine and the president spurred the 
horse and the horse jumped in the air and came 
down kerchunk on an asphalt pavement, the horse 
would explode, and when the rider came down 
covered with sausage covers and horse meat, he 
would be dead, or would want to be. Dad said 
the anarchists went into executive session and 
took up a collection to send a man to Berlin to 
fill the emperor’s saddle horse with cut feed like 
dad suggested. 

Well, the anarchist story was too much for 
Switzerland, and the next morning dad was told 
by a policeman that he had to get out of the 
country quick, and it didn’t take us 15 minutes 
to pack up, and here we are in Venice. 

Well, say, old friend, this is the place where 

183 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


you ought to be, because nobody works here, that 
is, nobody but gondoliers. We have been here 
several days, and I have not seen a soul doing 
anything except begging, or selling things that 
nobody seems to want. If anybody buys any- 
thing but onions, it is for curiosity, or for souv- 
enirs, and yet the whole population sits around 
in the sun and watches the strangers from other 
lands price things and go away without buying, 
and then everybody looks mad, as though they 
would like to jab a knife into the stranger. The 
plazas and the places near the canal are filled with 
hucksters and beggars, and you never saw beg- 
gars so mutilated and sore and disgusting. I nev- 
er supposed human beings could be so deformed, 
without taking an ax to them, and it is so pitiful 
to see them that you can’t help shedding your 
money. 

As hard hearted as dad is, he coughed up over 
$40 the first day, just giving to beggars, and he 
thought he had got them all bought up, and that 
they would let him alone, but the next day when 
he showed up there were te$ beggars where there 
was one the day before, and they followed him 
everywhere, and all the loafers in the plazas 
laughed and acted as if they would catch the 
cripples when dad got out of sight and rob the 

184 



" Dad coughed up over $ 40 , the first day , just giving to beggars." 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

beggars. Dad thinks the way the people live is 
by dividing with beggars. A man who has a de- 
formity, or a sore that you can see half a block 
away, seems to be considered rich here, like a 
man in America who owns stock in great corpora- 
tions. These beggars pay more taxes than the 
dukes and things who live in style. 

I suppose dad never studied geography, so he 
didn’t know how Venice was situated, so he told 
me to go out and order a hack the first morning 
we were here, and we would go and see the town. 
When I told dad there were no hacks, no horses 
and no roads in Venice, he said I was crazy in 
my head and wanted me to take some medicine 
and stay in bed for a few days, but I convinced 
him, when we got outdoors, that everything run 
by water, and when I showed him the canal and 
the gondolas, he remembered all about Venice, 
and picked out a gondalier that looked like one 
dad saw at the world’s fair, and we hired him be- 
cause he talked English. All the English the 
gondolier could use were the words “ you bet your 
life,” and “ you’re dam right,” but dad took him 
because it seemed so homelike, and we have been 
riding in gondolas every day. 

On the water you can get away from the beg- 
gars. This is an ideal existence. You just get 

1 86 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

in the gondola, under a canopy, and the gondolier 
does the work, and you glide along between build- 
ings and wonder who lives there, and when they 
wake up, as all day long the blinds are closed, and 
everybody seems to be dead. But at night, when 
the canals are lighted, and the moon shines, the 



One yell in the English language , and one in Eyetalian. 

people put on their dress clothes and sit on veran- 
das, or eat and drink, and talk Eyetalian, and ride 
in gondolas, and play guitars, and smoke cigar- 
ettes, and talk love. It is so warm you can wear 
your summer pants, and the water smells of clams 
that died long ago. It is just as though Chi- 

187 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


cago was flooded by the bursting of the sewers, 
and people had to go around State street, and 
all the cross streets, and Michigan avenue, in 
fishing boats, with three feet of water on top of 
the pavements. Imagine the people of Chicago 
taking gondolas and riding along the streets, 
landing at the stores and hotels, just as they do 
now from carriages. 

We had been riding in gondolas for two days, 
getting around in the mud when the tide was out, 
and going to sleep and waiting for the tide to 
come in, when it seemed to me that dad needed 
some excitement, and last night I gave it to 
him. 

We were out in our gondola, and the moon 
was shining, and the electric lights made the canal 
near the Rialto bridge as light as day. The Rial- 
to bridge crosses the Grand canal, and has been 
the meeting place for lovers for thousands of 
years. It is a grand structure, of carved mar- 
ble, but it wouldn’t hold up a threshing machine 
engine half as well as an iron bridge. Well, the 
canal was filled with thousands of gondolas, load- 
ed with the flower of Venetian society, and the 
music just made you want to fall in love. Dad 
said if he didn’t fall in love, or something, before 
morning, he would quit the place. I made up my 

1 88 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


mind he should fall into something, so I began by 
telling dad it seemed strange to me that nobody 
but Eyetalians could run a gondola. Dad said 
he could run a gondola as well as any foreigner, 
and I told him he couldn’t run a gondola for 
shucks, and he said he would show me, so he 
got out of the hen house where we were seated, 
and went back on to the pointed end of the gon- 
dola, and grabbed the pole or paddle from the 
gondolier, and said: “ Now, Garibaldi, you go 
inside the pup tent with Hennery, and let me 
punt this ark around awhile.” 

Garibaldi thought dad was crazy, but he gave 
up the pole, and just then, when they were both 
on the extreme point of the gondola, and she 
was wabbling some, I peeked out through the 
curtains and thought the fruit was about ripe 
enough to pick, so I threw myself over to one 
side of the gondola, and, by gosh, if dad and Gari- 
baldi didn’t both go overboard with a splash, and 
one yell in the English language, and one in Eye- 
talian, and I rushed out of the cabin and such a 
sight you never saw. 

Dad retained the paddle, and had his head out 
of water, but nothing showed above the water, 
where Garibaldi was except a red patch on his 
black pants. Dad was yelling for help, and final- 

189 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


ly the gondolier got his head out of the water, and 
said something that sounded like grinding a 
butcher knife on a grindstone, and I yelled, too, 
and the gondolas began to gather around us, and 
the two men were rescued. The gondolier had 
been gondoling all his life and he had never been 
in the water before, and they thought it would 
strike in and kill him, so they wrapped him up in 
blankets and put him aboard his canoe, and he 
looked at me as though I was to blame. They got 
a boat hook fastened in dad’s pants and landed 
him in the gondola, and he dripped all the way to 
our hotel, and he smelled like a fish market. 

I asked Garibaldi, on the way to the hotel, if 
he was counting his beads when he was down un- 
der the water with nothing but his pants out of 
the water, and he said : “ You’re dam right,” but 
I don’t think he knew the meaning of the words, 
because he probably wouldn’t swear in the pres- 
ence of death. Dad just sat and shivered all the 
way to the hotel, but when we got to our room I 
asked him what his idea was in jumping over- 
board right there before folks, with his best 
clothes on, and he said it was all Garibaldi’s fault, 
that just as dad was getting a good grip on the 



Then you don’t blame your little boy, do you? 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


paddle, the gondolier heaved a long sigh, and the 
onions in his breath paralyzed dad so he fell over- 
board. 

“ Then you don’t blame your little boy, do 
you? ” says I, and dad looked at me as he was 
hanging his wet shirt on a chair. “ Course not ; 
you were asleep in the cabin. But say, if I ever 
hear that you did tip that gondola, it will go hard 
with you,” but I just looked innocent, and dad 
went on drying his shirt by a charcoal brazier and 
never suspected me. But I am getting the worst 
of it, for dad and his clothes smell so much like a 
clam bake that it makes me sick. 

Well, old friend, you ought to close up your 
grocery and come over here and go to Vesuvius 
and Pompeii with us, where we can dry our 
clothes by the volcano, and dig in the city that 
was buried in hot ashes 2,000 years ago. They 
say you can dig up mummies there that are dead 
ringers for you, old man. 

O, come on, and have fun with us. 

Your friend, Hennery. 


192 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XVI. 

The Bad Boy Writes from Naples — Dad Sees Vesuvius 
and Calls the Servants to Put Out the Fire — They 
Have Trouble with a “Dago” in Pompeii. 

Naples, Italy.— Dear Old Partner in Crime: 
Well, sir, we have struck a place that reminds us 
of home, and your old grocery store. The day 
we got here dad and I took a walk into the poorer 
districts, where they throw all the slops and refuse 
in the streets, and where nobody ever seems to 
clean up anything and burn it. The odor was 
something that you cannot describe without a 
demonstration, and after we had turned pale and 
started to go away, dad said the smell reminded 
him of something at home, and finally he remem- 
bered your old grocery in the sauerkraut season, 
early in the morning, before you had aired out 
the place. Your ears must have burned when 
we were talking about you. 

If you want to get an idea of Naples, at its 
worst, go down into your cellar and round up all 
the codfish, onions, kraut, limburger cheese, kero- 
sene, rotten potatoes, and everything that is dead, 
put it all in a bushel basket, and just before the 

193 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


health officers come to pull your place, get down 
on your knees and put your head down in the 
basket, and let some one sit on your head all the 
forenoon, and you will have just such a half day 
as dad and I had in the poor quarter of Naples, 
and it will not cost you half as much as it did 
us, unless, after you have enjoyed yourself in 
your cellar with your head in the basket, you de- 
cide to have a run of sickness and hire a doctor 
who will charge you the price of a trip to Europe. 

Well, sir, Naples is a dandy, in its clean part. 
The bay of Naples is a dead ringer for Milwaukee 
bay, in shape and beauty, but Milwaukee lacks 
Vesuvius and Pompeii, for suburbs, and she lacks 
the customary highwaymen to hold you up. 
Every man, woman and child we have met makes 
a living out of the tourists, and nobody that I 
have seen works at any other business. 

We woke up the first morning and dad looked 
out the window and saw Vesuvius belching forth 
flame and lava and stone fences, and wanted to 
turn in a fire alarm, but I told him that that fire 
had been raging ever since the Christian era, and 
was not one of these incendiary barn burnings, 
but he opened the window and yelled fire, and 
the porters and chambermaids came running to 
our room, with buckets of water, and wanted to 


194 





Dad pointed out of the ivindow toward Vesuvius. 



PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


know where the fire was. Dad pointed out of the 
window towards Vesuvius and said: “ Some 
hired girl has been starting a fire with kerosene, 
in that shanty on the knoll out there, and the 
whole ranch will burn if you don’t turn out the 
fire department, you gosh blasted lazy devils. 
Get a move on and help carry out the furniture. ” 

Well, they calmed dad, and then I had to go 
to work and post dad up on the geography he had 
forgotten, and finally he remembered seeing a 
picture of a volcano or burning mountain in his 
geography 50 years ago, but he told me he never 
believed there was a volcano in the world, but 
that he always thought they put those pictures in 
geographies to make them sell. How a man can 
attain the prominence and position in the business 
world that dad has, and not know any more than 
he does, is what beats me. 

Of course, you know, having kept a grocery 
since the war, and having had opportunities to 
study history, by the pictures on the soap boxes 
and insurance calendars, that Nero, the Roman 
tyrant, after Rome was burned, while he fiddled 
for a dance in a barn, got so accustomed to fire 
and brimstone that he retired to Naples and 
touched off Vesuvius, just so he could look at it. 
But Vesuvius, about 2,000 years ago, got to burn- 

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PECK'S BAD BOY ABROAD 


in g way down in its bowels, and the fire got be- 
yond control, and I suppose now the fire is away 
down in the center of the earth, and you know 
when you get down in the earth below the crust, 
on which we live and raise potatoes, everything is 
melted, like iron in a foundry, and Vesuvius is 
the spigot through which the fluid comes to the 
surface. You see, don’t you? 

Just imagine that this earth is a barrel of beer, 
which you can understand better than anything 
else, and it is being shaken up by being hauled 
around on wagons and cars, and is straining to 
get out, then a bartender drives a spigot into the 
bung, turns the thumb piece, and the pent-up beer 
comes out foaming and squirting, and there you 
are. 

Instead of beer, Vesuvius is loaded with lava, 
that runs like molasses, and when it is cold it is 
indigestible as a cold buckwheat cake, and you 
can make it up into jewelry, that looks like maple 
sugar and smells like a fire in a garbage crema- 
tory. Besides the lava there are stones as big as 
a house that are thrown up by the sea-sickness of 
the earth, as it heaves and pants, and then the 
ashes that come out of the crater at tiflies would 
make you think that what they need there is to 

197 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


have a chimney sweep go down and brush out the 
flues. 

To get an idea of what a nuisance the ashes 
from the crater are to the cities on the plain be- 
low, you remember the time you were out in your 



back yard splitting boxes for kindling wood and 
my chum and I threw a pail of ashes over the 
fence, and accidentally it went all over you, about 
four inches thick. That time you got mad and 
threw cucumbers at us, when we ran down the 
alley. Keep that in your mind and you can un- 

198 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


derstand the destruction of Pompeii, when Ve- 
suvius, thousands of years ago, coughed up hot 
ashes and covered the town 40 feet deep with 
hot stuff, and killed every living thing, and pet- 
rified and preserved the whole business, and 
made a prairie on top of a town, and everybody 
eventually forgot that there had ever been a town 
there, for about 2,000 years. . If my chum and I 
had not run out of ashes we would have buried 
you so deep in your back yard that you would 
have been petrified with your hatchet, and when 
they excavated the premises a thousand years 
later they would have found your remains and 
put you in a museum. 

Well, a couple of hundred years ago a peasant 
was sinking a well down in the ashes, and he 
struck a petrified barroom, with a bartender 
standing behind the bar in the act of serving some 
whisky 2,000 years old, and the peasant located 
a claim there, and the authorities took possession 
of the prairie and have been digging the town 
out ever since, looking for more of that 2,000- 
year-old whisky. 

When I told dad about what they were finding 
at the ruins of Pompeii, and how you were liable 
to find gold and diamonds and petrified women, 
he wanted to go and dig in the ashes, as he said 

199 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


it would be more exciting than raking over the 
dumping grounds in Chicago for tin cans and 
lumps of coal, and so we hired a hack and went 
to the buried town, but dad insisted on carrying 
an umbrella, so if Vesuvius belched any more 
ashes he could protect himself. Gee, but from 
what I have seen at that old ruin, a man would 
need an umbrella made of corrugated iron to 
keep from being buried. 

Well, when we got to Pompeii dad was for 
going right where they were digging, but I got 
him to look over the streets and houses that had 
been uncovered first, and he was paralyzed to 
think that a town could be covered with ashes all 
these thousands of years, and then be uncovered 
and find a town that would compare, in many 
respects, with cities of the present day, with resi- 
dences complete with sculpture, paintings and cut 
marble that would skin Chicago to a finish. 

We went through residences that looked as rich 
as the Vanderbilt houses in New York, baths that 
you could take a plunge and a swim in, if they 
had the water, paintings that would take a pre- 
mium at any horse show to-day, pavements that 
would shame the pavements of London and Paris, 
and petrified women that you couldn't tell from 
a low-necked party in Washington, except that 


200 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


the ashes had eaten the clothes off. I guess most 
of the people in Pompeii got away when the ashes 
began to rain down, for they must have seen that 
it wasn't going to be a light shower, but a deluge, 
'cause they never have found many corpses. They 
must have run to Naples, and maybe they are 
running yet, and you may see some of them, at 
your grocery, and if you do see anybody covered 
with ashes, looking for a job, give them some 
crackers and cheese and charge it to dad, for they 
must be hungry by this time. 

Say, do you know that some of those refugees 
from Pompeii went off in such a hurry that they 
left bread baking in the ovens, and meat cooking 
in the pots? It seems the most wonderful thing 
to me of anything I ever saw. We went all 
through the streets and houses and saw ball- 
rooms that beat anything in San Francisco, and 
when we went into a building occupied by the 
officers in charge of the excavations, and dad saw 
a telephone and an electric light, he thought those 
things had been dug up, too, and he claimed that 
the men who were receiving millions of dollars 
in royalties on telephones and electric lights were 
frauds who were infringing on Pompeii patents 
2,000 years old, and he wouldn't believe me when 
I told him that telephones and electric lights were 


201 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


not dug up ; he said then he wouldn't believe any- 
thing was dug up, but that the whole thing was 
a put-up job to rob tourists. But when we got 
to a locality where the dagoes were digging the 
ashes away from a house and were uncovering 



a parlor, where rich things were being discovered, 
he saw that it was all right. 

I suppose I never ought to have played such a 
thing on dad, but I told him that anybody who 
saw a thing first when it came out of the ashes 
could grab it and keep it, and just as I told him 
a workman threw out a shovel full of ashes, just 


202 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


as you would throw out dirt digging for angle- 
worms, and there was a little silver urn with a 
lot of coins in it, and you could not hold dad. He 
grabbed for it, the workman grabbed for it, and 
they went down together in the ashes, and the 
man rolled dad over and he was a sight, but the 
workman got the silver urn, and dad wanted to 
fight. Finally a man with a uniform on came 
along and was going to arrest dad, but they finally 
compromised by the man offering to sell the silver 
urn and the gold coins to dad for a hundred dol- 
lars, if he would promise not to open it up until 
he got out of Italy, and dad paid the money and 
wrapped the urn up in a Chicago paper, and we 
took our hack and went back to Naples on a 
gallop. 

Dad could hardly wait till we got to the hotel 
before opening up his prize, but he held out until 
we got to our room, when he unwrapped the urn 
to count his ancient gold coins. Well, you'd a- 
died to see dad's face when he opened that can. 
It was an old tomato can that had been wrought 
out with a hammer so it looked like hammered 
silver, and when he emptied the gold coins out 
on the table there was a lot of brass tags that 
looked like dog license tags, and baggage checks 
and brass buttons. I had to throw water on dad 


203 


PECK'S BAD BOY ABROAD 


to bring him to, and then he swore he would kill 
the dago that sold him the treasure from the 
ruins of Pompeii. It was a great blow to dad, 
and he has bought a dirk knife to kill the dago. 

To-morrow we take in Vesuvius, and when we 
come down from the crater we go to Pompeii and 
kill the dago in his tracks. Dad may cause Ve- 
suvius to belch again with hot ashes, and cover 
the ruins of Pompeii, but if he can't turn on the 
ashes, the knife will do the business. Yours, 

Hennery. 


204 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XVII. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Climb Vesuvius — A Chi- 
cago Lady Joins the Party and Causes Trouble. 

Naples, Italy. — Siegnor ze Grocerino: I guess 
that will make you stand without hitching for a 
little while. Say, I am getting so full of dead 
languages, and foreign palaver, that I shall have 
to have an operation on my tongue when I get 
home before I can speel the United States lan- 
guage again so you can make head or tail of it. 
You see, I don’t stay long enough in a country 
to acquire its language, but I get a few words 
into my system, so now my English is so mixed 
with French words, Italian garlic and German 
throat trouble that I cannot understand myself 
unless I look in a glass and watch the motions 
of my lips. Dad has not picked up a word of 
any foreign language, and says he should con- 
sider himself a traitor to his country if he tried 
to talk anything but English. He did get so 
he could order a glass of beer by holding up his 
finger and saying “ ein,” but he found later that 
just holding up his finger without saying “ ein ” 

205 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


would bring the beer all the same so he cut out the 
language entirely and works his finger until it 
needs a rest. 

When I used to study my geography at the lit- 
tle red schoolhouse, and look at the picture of the 



It was a picture to see Dad “Go up Old Baldhead.” 

volcano Vesuvius, and read about how it would 
throw up red-hot lava, and ashes, and rocks as big 
as a house, and wipe out cities, it looked so ter- 
rible to me that I was glad when we got through 
with the volcano lesson, and got to Greenland’s 
icy mountains, where there was no danger except 

206 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


being frozen to death, or made sick by eating 
blubber sliced off of whales. 

Then I never expected to be right on the very 
top of that volcano, throwing stones down in the 
lava, and sailing chips down the streams of hot 
stuff, just as I sailed chips on ice water at home 
when the streets were flooded by spring rains. 
Say, there is no more danger on Vesuvius than 
there is in a toboggan slide, or shooting the 
chutes at home. I thought we would have to hire 
dagoes to carry us up to the top, and be robbed 
and held up, and may be murdered, but it is just 
as easy as going up in the elevator of a skyscrap- 
er, and no more terrifying than sitting on a 50- 
cent seat in a baseball park at home and wit- 
nessing the “ Destruction of Pompeii ” by a fire- 
works display 

The crater looks sort of creepy, like a big caul- 
dron kettle boiling soap on a farm, only it is big- 
ger, and down in the earth’s bowels you can well 
believe there is trouble, and if you believe in a 
hell, you can get it, illustrated proper, but the 
rivulets of lava that flow out of the wrinkles 
around the mouth of the crater are no more ap- 
palling than making fudges over a gas stove. 
When the lava cools you would swear it was 
207 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


fudges, only you can’t eat the lava and get indi- 
gestion as you can eating fudges. 

It was hard work to get dad to go up on the 
volcano, because he said he knew he would fall 
into it, and get his clothes burned, and he said he 
couldn’t climb clear to the top, on account of his 
breath being short, but when I told him he could 
ride up on a trolley car, and have the volcano 
brought right to him, he weakened, and one morn- 
ing we left Naples early and before two hours had 
passed we were on a little cogwheel railroad go- 
ing up, and dad was looking down on the scenery, 
expecting every minute the cogs would slip and 
we would cut loose and go down all in a heap and 
be plastered all over the vineyards and big trees 
and be killed. 

I don’t know what makes dad so nervous, but 
he wanted a woman from Chicago, who was on 
the car with us, to hold his hand all the way up, 
but she said she was no nurse in a home for the 
aged, and she said she would cuff dad if he didn’t 
let go of her. I told her she better not get dad 
mad if she knew what was good for her, for he 
was a regular Bluebeard, and wouldn’t take no 
slack from no Chicago female, ’cause he had 
buried nine wives already. So she held his hand, 

208 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

and I guess she thinks she will be my stepmother, 
but I bet she don’t. 

Well, after we got almost to the top the car 
stopped, and we had to walk the rest of the way, 
several hundred feet, and we had to have a oush- 



er and a putter for dad, a dago to go ahead and 
pull him up, and another to put his shoulder 
against dad’s pants and shove. Gee, but it was a 
picture to see dad “ go up old baldhead,” with 
the dagoes perspiring and swearing at dad for 
being so heavy, and the Chicago woman laugh- 
ing, and me pushing her up. 


209 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


One thing that scared dad was that every little 
way there was a shrine, where the guides left 
dad lying on the ground, blocked with a piece of 
cold lava, so he wouldn’t roll down, like you would 
block a wagon wheel, and they would go to the 
shrine and kneel and say some prayers. 

Dad was afraid they were going to charge the 
prayers in the bill for pushing him up, but I told 
dad that these people expected every time they 
went up to the top that it would be their last trip, 
as they knew that some day the volcano would 
open in a new place and swallow them whole, with 
all the tourists. Then he gave them a dollar 
apiece to pray for him, and wanted to go back 
down the mountain and let Vesuvius run its own 
fireworks, but the Chicago lady told dad to brace 
up and she would protect him, and so the guides 
gave a few more pushes, and we were on top of 
the volcano, and dad collapsed and had to be 
brought to with smelling salts and whisky that 
the woman carried in her pistol pocket. 

Gee, but it was worth all the trouble to get up 
the mountain, to see the sight that opened up. 
The hole in the mountain filled with boiling stuff 
was worth the price of admission, and the roaring 
of the boiling stuff, and the explosions way down 
cellar, and the flying stones, the smoke going into 


210 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


the air for a mile, like the burning of an oil well, 
the red-hot lava finding crevices to leak through, 
and flowing down the side of the mountain in 
streams like hot maple sirup, made a scene that 
caused us to take off our hats and thank the good 
Lord that the thing hadn't overflowed enough 
to hurt us. But I could see dad was scared, 
'cause when I wanted him to go around the edge' 
of the crater with me, and see the hell-roaring 
free show from other points of view, and see 
where the hot ashes years ago rolled down and 
covered Pompeii and Herculaneum, he balked 
and said he had seen all he wanted to, and if he 
could stay alive until the next car went down 
the mountain, they could all have his interest in 
Vesuvius, and be darned to them, but he said if 
I wanted to go around looking for trouble, he 
would stay there under a big rock, with the Chi- 
cago lady, and wait for me to come back. She 
said she knew dad was all tired out, and needed 
rest, and she would stay with him, and keep him 
cheered up ; so I left them and went off with one 
of the dagoes, to slide down hill on some flowing 
lava, and pick up specimens. 

Well, sir, I wish I could get along some way 
without telling the rest of this sad story, but if 


21 1 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


I am going to be a historian I have got to tell 
the whole blame thing. 

When I left dad and the Chicago woman she 
had produced a lunch from somewhere about her 
person, and_a_small bottle, and they were eating 



Her husband pulled a long , blue gun. 


and drinking, and dad was laughing more natur- 
al than I had seen him laugh since we run over 
the old woman with the automobile at Nice, and 
she was smiling on dad just as though she was 
his sweetheart. (As I went around the crater, a 
couple of blocks away, I looked back and dad had 


212 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

laid his head in her lap, and she was stroking his 
hair.) 

Well, I picked up specimens, burned the soles 
off my shoes wading in the lava, and took in the 
volcano from all sides, and after an hour I went 
back to where dad and the woman were lunching, 
but the woman was gone, and dad acted as though 
he had been hit by an express train, his eyes were 
wild, his collar was gone, his pocketbook was on 
the ground, empty, his coat was gone, his scarf- 
pin had disappeared and the $i i watch he bought 
when he was robbed the other time was missing, 
and dad's tongue was run out, and he was yelling 
for water. I thought he had been trying to drink 
some lava. 

“ Dad, what in the world has happened to 
you? " said I, as I rushed up to him. 

“ That woman has happened to me, that is all,” 
said dad, as he took a swallow of water out of a 
canteen one of the dagoes had. 

“ Tell me about it, dad," said I, trying to keep 
from laughing, when I saw that he was not hurt. 

“ Say, let this be a lesson to you," said dad, 
“ and don't you steer another woman to me on 
this trip. Do you know you hadn’t more than got 
around that big rock when she said she was tired 
and was going to faint, for the altitude was too 

213 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

high for her, and I tried to soothe her, and she 
did look pale, and, by gosh, I thought she was 
going to die on my hands, and I would have to 
carry her corpse down the mountain. I heard a 
scuffling on the rocks, and she looked up and saw 
a man not ten feet away, and she said : ‘ Me 

husband ! ’ and then she fainted and grabbed me 
around the neck, and I couldn't get her loose. 
She just froze to me like a person drowning, and 
that husband of hers, who had come up on the 
last car, hunting for his wife, who had eloped, 
pulled a long blue gun and told me he would give 
me five minutes to pray, and then he would kill 
me and throw my body down in the creater, to 
sizzle. 

“ I told him I could pay up enough ahead in 
three minutes, and he could take all I had if he 
would loosen up his wife, and bring her to, and 
take her away, and let me die all alone, and let 
the buzards eat me, uncooked. He took the bet, 
pulled her arms away from my throat, took my 
money and coat, brought her to, and said he was 
going to throw her into the crater, but I told him 
she had certainly been good to me, and if he 
would spare her life, and take her away in the 
cars, he could have my watch and scarfpin, and 
he took them, and they went to the cars. 


214 







PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

“ She looked back at me with the saddest face 
I ever saw, and said : ‘ O, sir, it is all a terrible 

dream, and I will see you in Naples, and explain 
all/ and now, by Christmas, I want to go back to 
town and find her, and rescue her from that 
jealous husband/’ and dad got up and we started 
for the car. 

The man and his wife went down on the car 
ahead of us, and dad wouldn’t believe they were 
regular bunko people, who play that game every 
day on some old sucker, but the man that runs 
the car told me so. 

I can be responsible for dad in everything ex- 
cept the women he meets. When it comes to 
women, your little Hennery don’t know the game 
at all. Yours, 

Hennery. 


216 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

The Bad Boy Makes Friends with Some Italian Chil- 
dren — Dad Is Chased by Lions from the Coli- 
seum — “Not Any More Rome for 
Papa,” Says Dad. 

Rome, Italy. — My Dear Old “ Pard:” Well, 
sir, if you could see me now, you wouldn’t 
know me, because foreign travel has broadened 
me out so I can talk on any subject, and people 
of my age look upon me as an authority, and 
they surround me everywhere I go and urge me 
to talk. The fact that the boys and girls do not 
understand a word I say makes no difference. 
They do not wear many clothes here, and there 
is no style about them, and when they see me 
with a whole suit of clothes on, and a hat and 
shoes and socks, and a scarf-pin on my necktie, 
they think I must be an Americano that is too 
rich for any use, or something that ranks with a 
prince at least, and the boys delight to be with 
me and do errands for me, and the girls seem to 
be in love with me. 

There is no way you can tell if a girl is in love 
with you, except that she looks at you with eyes 

217 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


that are as black as coal, and they seem to burn 
a hole right into your insides, and when they 
take hold of your hand they hang on and squeeze 
like alamand-left in a dance at home, and they 
snug up to you and are as warm and cheerful as 
a gas stove. 

Say, I sat on a bench in a plaza with a girl 
about my age, for an hour, while the other girls 
and boys sat on the ground and looked at us in 
admiration, and when I put my arm around her 
and kissed her on her pouting lips, it brought on 
a revolution. An Italian soldier policeman took 
me by the neck and threw me across the street, 
the girl scratched me with her finger nails and 
bit me, and yelled some grand hailing sign of dis- 
tress, her brother and a ragged boy that was in 
love with the girl and was jealous, drew daggers, 
and the whole crowd yelled murder, and I started 
for our hotel on a run, and the whole population 
of Rome seemed to follow me, and I might as 
well have been a negro accused of crime in the 
states. I thought they would burn me at the 
stake, but dad came out of the hotel and threw a 
handful of small change into the crowd, and it 
was all ofif. 

After they picked up the coin they beckoned me 
to come out and play some more, but not any 

218 


PECK S BAD BOY ABROAD 

more for little Hennery. I have been in love in 
all countries where we have traveled, and in all 
languages, but this Italian love takes the whole 
bakery, and I do not go around any more with- 
out a chaperone. The girls are ragged and wear 



" When I put my arm around her and kissed her on the pouting 
lips it brought on a revolution ” 

shawls over their heads, and there are holes in 
their dresses and their skin isn’t white, like 
American girls’, but’ is what they call olive com- 
plexion, like stuffed olives you buy in bottles, 
stuffed with cayenne pepper, but the girls are just 
like the cayenne pepper, so warm that you want 


219 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


to throw water on yourself after they have 
touched you. Gee, but I wouldn’t want to live 
in a climate where girls were a torrid zone, ’cause 
I should melt, like an icicle that drops in a stove, 
and makes steam and blows up the whole house. 

Well, old man, you talk about churches, but you 
don’t know anything about it. Dad and I went to 
St. Peter’s in Rome, and it is the grandest thing 
in the world. Say, the Congregational church at 
home, which we thought so grand, could be put 
in one little corner of St. Peter’s, and would look 
like 30 cents. St. Peter’s covers ground about 
half a mile square, and when you go inside and 
look at grown people on the other side of it, they 
look like flies, and the organ is as big as a block 
of buildings in Chicago, and when they blow it 
you think the last day has come, and yet the music 
is as sweet as a melodeon, and makes you want to 
get down on your knees with all the thousands of 
good Christians of Italy, and confess that you 
are a fraud that ought to be arrested. 

Dad and I have been to all kinds of churches, 
everywhere, and never turned a hair, but since 
we got to this town and got some of the prevail- 
ing religion into our systems, we feel guilty, and 
it seems as though everybody could see right into 
us, and that they knew we were heathen that 


220 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


never knew there was a God. Sure thing, I 
never supposed there were so many people in the 
world that worshiped their Maker, as there are 
here, and I don't wonder that all over the world 
good people look to Rome for the light. Dad 
keeps telling me that when we get home we will 
set an example that will make people pay atten- 
tion, but he says he does not want to join the 
church until he has seen all the sights, and then 
he will swear off for good. 

He said to me yesterday: “ Now, Hennery, I 
have been to all the pious places with you, the 
pope's residence, the catacombs and St. Peter's, 
where they preach from 40 different places and 
make you feel like giving up your sins, and I have 
looked at carvings and decorations and marble 
and jewels and seen the folly of my ways of life, 
and I am ripe for a change, but before I give up 
the world and all of its wickedness, I want blood. 
I want to go to the other extreme, and see the wild 
beasts at the Coliseum tear human beings limb 
from limb, and drink their blood, and see gladi- 
ators gladiate, and chop down their antagonists, 
and put one foot on their prostrate necks, like they 
do in the theaters, and then I am ready to leave 
this town and be good." 

Well, sir, I have been in lots of tight places 


221 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


before, but this one beat the band. Here was my 
dad, who did not know that the Roman gladiator 
business had been off the boards for over 2,000 
years, that the eating of human prisoners by wild 
beasts in the presence of the Roman populace was 



played out, and that the Coliseum was a ruin and 
did not exist as a place of amusement. He 
thought everything that he had read about the 
horrors of a Roman holiday was running to-day, 
as a side show, and he wanted to see it, and I had 


222 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

encouraged him in his ideas, because he was 
nervous, and I didn't want to undeceive him. He 
had come to Rome to see things he couldn’t find 
at home, and it was up to me to deliver the goods. 

Gee, but it made me sweat, ’cause I knew if dad 
did not get a show for his money he would lay 
it up against me, so I told him we would go to 
the Coliseum that night and see the hungry lions 
and tigers eat some of the leading citizens, just 
as they did when Caesar run the show. Then I 
found an American from Chicago at the hotel, 
who sells soap in Rome, and told him what dad 
expected of me in the way of amusement, and 
he said the only way was to take dad out to the 
Coliseum, and in the dark roll a barrel of broken 
glass down the tiers of seats and make him be- 
lieve there was an earthquake that had destroyed 
the Coliseum, and that the lions and tigers were 
all loose, looking for people to eat, and scare dad 
and make a run back to town. 

I didn’t want to play such a scandalous trick 
on dad, but the Chicago man said that was the 
only way out of it, and he could get a barrel of 
broken glass for a dollar, and hire four ruffians 
that could roar like lions for a few dollars, and 
it would give dad good exercise, and may be save 
him from a run of Roman fever, ’cause there was 


223 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

nothing like a good sweat to knock the fever out 
of a fellow’s system. The thing struck me as not 
only a good experience for dad, but a life saver, 
so I whacked up the money, and the Chicago soap 
man did the rest. 

After dark we went out to the ruin of the Coli- 
seum, where a great many tourists go to look at 
the ruins by moonlight, and dad was as anxious 
and bloodthirsty as a young surgeon cutting up 
his first “ stiff.” When we got to the right place, 
and I told dad we were a little early, because the 
nobility were not in their seats, the villains began 
to roar three dollars’ worth like hungry lions, 
and dad turned a little pale and said that sounded 
like the real thing. 

I told him we better not get too near, because 
we were not accustomed to seeing live men 
chewed up by beasts, and dad said he didn’t care 
how near we got, as long as they chewed and 
tore to pieces the natives; so we started to work 
up a little nearer, when there was a noise such as 
I never heard before, as the hogshead of broken 
glass began to roll down the tiers of stone seats, 
and I fell over on the ground, and pushed dad, 
and he went over in the sand and struck his pants 
on a cactus, and yelled that he was stabbed with 
a dirk, and I got up and fell down again, and 


224 



PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


just then the Chicago soap man came up on a 
gallop, followed by the villains playing lion and 
tiger, and dad asked the Chicago man what 
seemed to be the matter, and he said : “ Matter 
enough; there has been an earthquake, and the 
Coliseum has fallen down, killing more than io,- 
ooo Romans, and the animals’ cages are busted 
and the animals are loose, looking for fresh meat, 
and we better get right back to Rome, too quick, 
or we will be eaten alive. Come on if you are 
with me. Do you hear the lions after us?” said 
he, as the hired villains roared. 

Well, you’d a died to see dad get up out of 
that prickly cactus and take the lead for good old 
Rome. I didn’t know he was such a sprinter, 
but we trailed along behind, roaring like lions 
and snarling like tigers and yip-yapping like hy- 
enas and barking like timber wolves, and we 
couldn’t see dad for the dust, on that moonlight 
night. 

We slowed up and let dad run ahead, and he 
got to the hotel first, and we paid off the villains, 
and finally we went in the hotel and found dad 
in the bar-room puffing and drinking a high-ball. 
“ Pretty near hell, wasn’t it,” said dad, to the 
soap man. “ Did the lions catch anybody?” “ O, 
a few of the lower classes,” said the soap man, 

226 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


“ but none of the nobility. The nobility were in 
the boxes and that part of the Coliseum never 
falls during an earthquake/’ and the soap man 
joined dad in a high-ball. 

After dad got through puffing and had wiped 
about two quarts of perspiration off his head and 



" You’d a died to see dad take the lead for good old Rome.” 

neck, and the soap man had told him what a great 
thing it was to perspire in Rome, on account of 
the Roman fever, that catches a man at night 
and kills him before morning, dad turned to me 
and said : “ Hennery, you go pack up and we 

get out of this in the morning, for I feel as though 
I had been chewed by one of those hyenas. Not 

227 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

any more Rome for papa,” and the high-ball party 
broke up, and we went to bed to get sleep enough 
to leave town. 

Do you know, the next morning those hired 
villains made the soap man and I pay ten dollars 
extra on account of straining their lungs roar- 
ing like lions? But we paid for their lungs all 
right, rather than have them present a bill to dad. 

Well, good-by, old man. We are getting all 
the fun there is going. Your only, 

Hennery. 



228 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XIX. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Visit the Pope — They Bow 
to the King of Italy and His Nine Spots — Dad 
Finds That “The Catacombs” Is Not a 
Comic Opera. 

Rome, Italy. — Dear Old Friend: You remem- 
ber, don't you when you were a boy, playing “ tag, 
you're it," and “ button, button, who's got the but- 
ton ? " that one of the trying situations was to 
be judged to “ go to Rome," which meant that 
you were to kiss every girl in the room. 

I never got enough “ going to Rome " when I 
attended church sociables and parties, but always 
got blindfolded, and had to kiss anybody they 
brought to me, which was usually a boy or a col- 
ored cook, so I teased dad to take me to Rome, 
and when he got over his being rattled and 
robbed and burned by lava at Vesuvius, he said he 
didn’t care where he went, and, besides, I told 
him about the Roman Coliseum, where they 
turned hungry tigers and lions and hyenas loose 
among the gladiators, and the people could see 
the beasts eat them alive, and dad said that was 
something like it, as the way he had been robbed 


229 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


and misued in Italy, he would enjoy seeing a good 
share of the population chewed by lions, if the 
lions could stand it. I didn’t tell dad that the 
wild animal show had not been running for a 



couple of thousand years, ’cause I thought he 
would find it out when we got here. 

Say, old man, I guess I can help you to locate 
Rome. You remember the time I spoke a piece at 
the school exhibition, when I put my hand inside 
my flannel shirt, like an orator, and said: “ And 

230 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

this is Rome, that sat on her seven hills, and from 
her throne of beauty ruled the whole world.” 
Well, this is it, where I am now, but the seven 
hills have been graded down, and Rome don't rule 
the whole world a little bit ; but she has got relig- 
ion awful. 

The pope lives here, and he is the boss of more 
religious people than anybody, and though you 
may belong to any other kind of church, and 
when you are home you don't care a continental 
for any religion except your own, or your wife's 
religion, and you act like an infidel, and scoff at 
good people, when you get to Rome and see the 
churches thicker than saloons in Milwaukee, and 
everybody attending church and looking pious, 
you catch the fever, and try to forget bad things 
you have done, and if you get a chance to see the 
pope, you may go to his palace just 'cause you 
want to see everything that is going on, and you 
think you don't care whether school keeps or 
not, and you feel independent, as though this re- 
ligion was something for weak people to indulge 
in, and finally you come face to face with the pope, 
and see his beautiful face, and his grand eyes, 
and his every movement is full of pious meaning, 
you “ penuk ” right there, and want to kneel down 
and let him bless you, by gosh. 

231 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


Say, I never saw dad weaken like he did when 
the pope came in. We got tickets to go to his 
reception, but dad said he had rather go to the 
catacombs, or the lion show at the Coliseum. He 
said he didn't want to encourage popes, because 
he didn't believe they amounted to any more than 
presiding elders at home. He said he had always 
been a Baptist, and they didn't have any popes in 
his church, and he didn’t believe in 'em, but some 
other Americans were going to see the pope, and 
dad consented to go, under protest, it being un- 
derstood that he didn't care two whoops, anyway. 

Well, sir, we went and it was the grandest 
thing you ever saw. There were guards by the 
thousand, beautiful gardens that would make 
Central Park look like a hay marsh, hundreds of 
people in church vestments, and an air of sanctity 
that we never dreamed; jewels that are never 
seen outside the pope's residence, and we lined up 
to see the holy father pass. 

Gee, but dad trembled like a dog tied out in the 
snow, and the perspiration stood out on his face, 
and he looked sorry for himself. Then came the 
procession, all nobles and great people, and then 
there was a party of pious men carrying the most 
beautiful man we ever saw on a platform above 
us, and it was the pope, and he smiled at me, and 


232 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


the tears came to my eyes, and I couldn't swallow 
something which I s'pose was my sins, and then 
he looked at dad, and held up one hand, and dad 
was pale, and there was no funny business about 
dad any more, and then they set the platform 



“Say, for awhile dad dassent go up” 

down and the pope sat in a chair, and those who 
wanted to went up to him, and he blessed them. 

Say, for awhile dad dassent go up, 'cause he 
thought the pope could see right through him, 
and would know he was a Baptist, but the rest of 
the Americans were going up, and dad didn't 

233 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


want to be eccentric, so he and I went up. The 
pope put out his hand to dad, and instead of shak- 
ing it, as he would the hand of any other man on 
earth, and asking how his folks were, dad bent 
over and kissed the pope’s hand, and the pope 
blessed him. Dad looked like a new man, a good 
man, and when the pope put his hand on my head, 
and blessed me, my heart came up in my throat, 
’cause I thought he must know of all the mean 
things I had ever done, but I can feel his soft, 
beautiful hand on my head now, and from this 
out I would fight any boy twice my size that ever 
said a word against the pope and his religion. 
When we got outside dad says to me : “Hennery, 
don’t you ever let me hear of your doing a thing 
that would make the good man sorry if he was 
to hear about it.” And we went to our hotel and 
stayed all the afternoon, and all night, and just 
thought of that pope’s angelic face, and when one 
of the Americans came to our room and wanted 
dad to play cinch, he was indignant, and said : “ I 
would as soon think of robbing a child’s bank,” 
and we went to bed, and if dad wasn’t a converted 
man I never saw one. 

Well, sir, trouble, and sorrow, and religion, 
don’t last very long on dad. The next morning 
we talked things over, and I quoted all the Ro- 

234 


PECK’S BAD BOV ABROAD 


man stuff I could think of to dad, such as “In that 
elder day, to be a Roman was greater than a 
king,” but before I could think twice there was a 
commotion in the streets and a porter came and 
made us take off our hats, because the king was 
riding by, and we looked at the king, and dad 
was hot. He said that fellow was nothing but a 
railroad hand, disguised in a uniform, and, by 
ginger, if we had seen that king out west work- 
ing on a railroad, with canvas clothes on, he 
would not have looked like a king, on a bet. There 
was nothing but his good clothes that stood be- 
tween the king and a dago digging sewers in Chi- 
cago. 

After the king and his ninespots had passed, 
dad said : “When you are in Rome, you must do 
as the Romans do,” and he said he wanted to get 
that heavy feeling off his shoulders, which he got 
at the religious procession, and wanted me to sug- 
gest something devilish that we could do, and I 
told him we better go and see the “Catacombs.” 
He wanted to know if it was anything like “a 
trip to Chinatown,” or the “Black Crook,” and 
I told him it was worse. Then he asked me if 
there was much low neck and long stockings in 
the “Catacombs,” and I told him there was a 
plenty, and he said he was just ripe to see that 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


kind of a show, and so we took a carriage for the 
"Catacombs,” and dad could hardly keep still till 
we got there. 

I suppose I ought to be killed for fooling dad, 
but he craved for excitement, and he got it. The 
"Catacombs’' are where Roman citizens have 
been buried for thousands of years, in graves 
hewn out of solid rock, and they are petrified, and 
after they have laid in the graves for a few hun- 
dred years, the mummified bodies are taken out 
and stood up in corners, if the bodies will hang 
together, and if not the bones are piled up around 
for scenery. 

We had to take torches to go in, and we wan- 
dered through corridors, gazing at the remains, 
until dad asked one of the men with us what it 
all meant, and the man said it was the greatest 
show on earth. Dad began to think he was nutty, 
and when I laughed, and said : "That is great,” 
and clapped my hands, and said: "Encore,” dad 
stopped and said : "Hennery, this is no leg show, 
this is a morgue,” but to cheer him up I told him 
his head must be wrong, and I pointed to about 
a hundred dried corpses, a thousand years old, in 
a corner, with grinning skulls all around, and told 
him that was the ballet, and told him to look at the 
leading dancer, and asked him if she wasn’t a 

236 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


beaut, from Butte, Mont., and that killed dad. 
He leaned against me, and said his eyes must 
have gone back on him, because everything looked 
dead to him. I told him he would get over it 
after awhile, and to stay where he was while I 
went and spoke to one of the ballet that was beck- 
oning to me, and I left him there, dazed, and went 
around a corner and hid. 

People were coming along with torches all the 
time, looking at the catacombs and reading the 
inscriptions cut in the rock, and after awhile I 
went back to where I left dad, and he was gone, 
but after awhile I found him standing up with 
the stiffs. He was glad to see me, and wanted to 
know if I thought he was dead. I told him I was 
sure he was alive, though he had a deathly look 
on his face. “Well, sir,” says dad, “I thought it 
was all over with me, after you left, for a man 
came along and moved me around, and took hold 
under my arms and jumped me along here by 
these stiffs, and told me if I didn’t stay where I 
belonged he would break me up into bones, and 
throw me into a pile, and I thought I would have 
to do as the Romans do and stay here, and before 
the man left me he reached into my pocket and 
took my money, and said I couldn’t spend any 
money in there where I was going to stay for a 

237 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

million years, and, by gosh, I was so petrified I 
couldn’t stop him from robbing me. Say, Hen- 
nery, they will rob you anywhere, even in the 
grave, and if this Catacomb show is over, and 
the curtain has gone down, I want to get out of 


T old dad if he didn't stay where he belonged he would break him 
up into bones and throw him on a pile. 

here, and go to the Coliseum or the Roman am- 
phitheater, where the wild beasts eat people 
alive/’ And so we left the Catacombs and went 
back to town, and dad began to show life again. 
Say, you tell the folks at home that dad is gain- 

238 



PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

in g every day, and his vacation is doing him 
good. He has promised to kill me for taking him 
to the Catacomb show, but dad never harbors 
revenge for long, and I guess your little nephew 
will pull through. I wish I had my skates, cause 
dad wants to go to Russia. Yours, 

Hennery, 


239 


FECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XX. 

The Bad Boy Tells About the Land of the Czar and 
the Trouble They Had to Get There — Dad Does 
a Stunt and Mixes It Up with the 
People and Soldiers. 

St. Petersburg, Russia. — My Dear Groceryow- 
ski: Well, sir, I ’spose you will be surprised to 
hear from me in Russia, but there was no use talk- 
ing when Dad said he was going to St. Peters- 
burg if it was the last act of his life. He got talk- 
ing with a Japaneser in Rome and the Jap said the 
war in the far east would last until every Russian 
was killed, unless America interfered to put a stop 
to it, and as Roosevelt didn’t appear to have sand 
enough to offer his services to the czar, what it 
needed was for some representative American 
citizen who was brave and had nerve to go to St. 
Petersburg and see the czarovitch and give him 
the benefit of a good American talk. The Jap said 
the American who brought about peace, by a few 
well chosen remarks, would be the greatest man 
of the century, and would live to be bowed down 
to by kings and emperors and all the world would 
doff hats to him. 


240 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


At first dad was a little leary about going on 
such a mission without credentials from Wash- 
ington, but as luck would have it, he met an exiled 
Russian at a restaurant, who told dad that he re- 
minded him of Gen. Grant, because dad had a 
wart on the side of his nose, and he told dad that 
Russia would keep on fighting until every Japan- 
ese was killed unless some distinguished Ameri- 
can should be raised up who deemed it his duty 
to go to St. Petersburg and see the Little Father, 
and in the interest of humanity advise the czar 
to call a halt before he had exterminated the 
whole yellow race. Dad asked the Russian if he 
thought the czar would grant an audience to an 
American of eminence in his own country, and 
the Russian told dad that Nicholas just doted on 
Americans, and that there was hardly ever an 
American ballet dancer that went to Russia but 
what the czar sent for her to come and see him 
and dance before the grand dukes, and he always 
gave them jewels and cans of caviar as souvenirs 
of their visit. 

Dad thought it over all night, and the next 
morning we started for Russia and I wish we had 
joined an expedition to discover the North Pole 
instead of coming here. Say, it is harder to get 
into Russia than it would be to get out of a peni- 


241 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

tentiary at home. At the frontier we were met 
by guards on horseback and on foot, policemen, 
detectives and other grafters, who took our pass- 
ports and money, and one fellow made me ex- 
change my socks with him. Then they impris- 
oned us in a stable with some cows until they 



Told Dad that Nicholas just doted on Americans. 

could hold a coroner’s inquest on our passports 
and divide our money. We slept with the cows 
the first night in Russia, and I do not want to 
sleep again with animals that chew cuds all night, 
and get up half a dozen times to hump up their 
backs and stretch and bellow. We never slept a 
wink, and could look out through the cracks in the 


242 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

stable and see the guards shaking dice for our 
money. 

Finally they looked at the great seal on our 
passports and saw it was an American document, 
and they began to turn pale, as pale as a Russian 
can get without using soap, and when I said, 
“ Washington, embassador, minister plenipoten- 
tiary, Roosevelt, Hot Time in the Old Town To- 
night, E Pluribus Unum, whoopla, San Juan 
Hill,” and pointed to dad, who was just coming 
out of the stable, looking like Washington at Val- 
ley Forge, the guards and other robbers bowed to 
dad, gave him a bag full of Russian money in 
place of that which they had taken away, and let 
us take a freight train for St. Petersburg, and 
they must have told the train men who we were, 
because everybody on the cars took off their hats 
to us, and divided their lunch with us. 

Dad could not understand the change in the 
attitude of the people towards us until I told him 
that they took him for a distinguished American 
statesman, and that as long as we were in Russia 
he must try to look like George Washington and 
act like Theodore Roosevelt, so every little while 
dad would stand up in the aisle of the car and pose 
like George Washington and when anybody gave 
him a sandwich or a cigarette he would show his 

243 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


teeth and say, “ Deelighted,” and all the way to 
St. Petersburg dad carried out his part of the pro- 
gramme and we were not robbed once on the trip, 
but dad tried to smoke one of the cigarettes that 
was given him by a Cossack, and he died in my 
arms, pretty near. 

They make cigarettes out of baled hay that has 
been used for beddings and covered with paper 
that has been used to poison flies. I never smelled 
anything so bad since they fumigated our house 
by the board of health after the hired girl had 
smallpox. 

Well, we got to St. Petersburg in an awful 
time, and went to a hotel, suspected by the police, 
aiid marked as undesirable guests by the Cos- 
sacks, and winked at by the walking delegates 
and strikers, who thought we were non-union 
men looking for their jobs. 

The next day the religious ceremony of “ bless- 
ing the Neva ” took place, where all the popula- 
tion gets out on the bank of the river, with over- 
shoes on, and fur coats, and looks down on the 
river, covered with ice four feet thick, and the 
river is blessed. In our country the people would 
damn a river that had ice four feet thick, but in 
Russia they bless anything that will stand it. We 
got a good place on the bank of the river, with 
244 







—TAYLOR.— 


Shaking dice for our money. 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


about a million people who had sheepskin coats 
on, and who steamed like a sheep ranch, and were 
enjoying the performance, looking occasionally 
at the Winter palace, where the czar was peeking 
out of a window, wondering from which direc- 
tion a bomb would come to blow him up, when a 
battery of artillery across the river started to fire 
a salute, and then the devil was to pay. It seems 
that the gentlemen who handled the guns, and 
who were supposed to fire blank cartridges into 
the air, put in loaded cartridges, filled with grape 
shot, and took aim at the Winter palace, and cut 
loose at Mr. Czar. 

Well, you would have been paralyzed to see the 
change that came over that crowd, blessing the 
river one minute and damning the czar and the 
grand dukes the next. The shot went into the 
Winter palace and tore the furniture and ripped 
up the ceiling of the room the czar was in, and 
in a moment all was chaos, as though every Rus- 
sian knew the czar was to be assassinated at that 
particular moment, and all rushed toward the 
Winter palace as though they expected pieces of 
the Little Father would be thrown out the win- 
dow for them to play football with. For a people 
who are supposed to be lawful and law-abiding, 
and who love their rulers, it seemed strange to 

246 



“ A man in the sledge with a uniform on hit Dad in the nose 
with the butt of a revolver.” 






















































































































I 





















* 

































































* 




































PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


see them all so tickled when they thought he was 
blown higher than a kite by his own soldiers. 

Dad and I started with the crowd for the Win- 
ter palace, and then we had a taste of monarchial 
government. The crowd was rushing over us 
and dad got mad and pulled off his coat and said 
he could whip any confounded foreigner that 
rubbed against him with a sheepskin coat on, and 
he was just on the point of smiting a fellow with 
whiskers that looked like scrambled bristles off a 
black hog when a regiment of Cossacks came 
down on the crowd, riding horses like a wild west 
show, and with whips in their hands, with a dozen 
lashes to each whip, and they began to lash the 
crowd and ride over them, while the people cov- 
ered their faces with their arms, and run away, 
afraid of the whips, which cut and wound and 
kill, as each lash has little lead bullets fastened 
to them and a stroke of the whip is like being shot 
with buck shot or kicked with a frozen boot. 

Well, sir, dad was going to show the Cossacks 
that he was pretty near an American citizen and 
didn’t propose to be whipped like a school boy by 
a teacher that looked like a valentine, so he tried 
to look like George Washington defying the Brit- 
ish, but it didn’t work, for a Cossack rode right 
up to him and lashed him over the back (and 

247 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


about 15 buck shot in his whip took dad right 
where the pants are tight when you bend over to 
pick up something) and the Cossack laughed 
when dad straightened up and started to run. 

I never saw such a change in a man as there 



“A Cossack rode right up to him and lashed him over the back/ > 

was in dad. He started for our hotel, and as 
good a sprinter as I am I couldn’t keep up with 
him, but I kept him in sight. Before we got to 
the hotel a sledge came along, not an “ old 
sledge,” such as you play with cards, high-low- 

248 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


Jack-game, but a sort of a sleigh, with three 
horses abreast, and I yelled to dad to take a hitch 
on the sledge, and he grabbed on with his feet on 
the runners, and a man in the sledge with a uni- 
form on, who seemed to be a grand duke, 'cause 
everybody was chasing him and yelling to head 
him off, hit dad in the nose with the butt of a re- 
volver, and dad fell off in the snow and the crowd 
that was chasing the grand duke picked dad up 
and carried him on their shoulders because they 
thought he had tried to assassinate the duke, and 
we were escorted to our hotel by the strikers. 

We didn't know what they were, but you can 
tell the laboring men here because they wear 
blouses and look hungry, and when they left us 
the landlord notified the police that suspicious 
characters were at the hotel, and came there es- 
corted by the mob, and the police surrounded the 
house and dad went to our room and used witch 
hazel on himself where the Cossack hit him with 
the loaded whip. He says Russia will pay pretty 
dear for that stroke of the whip by the Cossack, 
and I think dad is going to join the revolution 
that is going to be pulled off next Sunday. 

They are going to get about a million men to 
take a petition to the czar, workingmen and an- 
archists, and dad says he is going as an American 


249 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

anarchist who is smarting from injustice, and I 
guess no native is smarting more than dad is, 
’cause he has to stand up to* eat and lie on his 
stummick to sleep. There is going to be a hades 
of a time here in St. Petersburg this next week, 
and dad and I are going to be in it clear up to our 
necks. 

Dad has given up trying to see the czar about 
stopping the war and says the czar and the whole 
bunch can go plum (to the devil) and he will die 
with the mob and follow a priest who is stirring 
the people to revolt. 

Gee, I hope dad will not get killed here and be 
buried in a trench with a thousand Russians, 
smelling as they do. 

I met a young man from Chicago, who is here . 
selling reapers for the harvester trust, and he 
says if you are once suspected of having sym- 
pathy with the working people who are on a strike 
you might just as well say your prayers and take 
rough on rats, 'cause the Cossacks will get you, 
and he would advise me and dad to get out of 
here pretty quick, but when I told dad about it he 
put one hand on his heart and the other on his 
pants and said “ Arnica, arnica, arnica ! ” and 
the police that were on guard near his room 
250 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

thought he meant anarchy, and they sent four 
detectives to stay in dad's room. 

The people here, the Chicago young man told 
me, think the Cossacks are human hyenas, that 
they have had their hearts removed by a surgical 
operation when young, arid a piece of gizzard put 
in in place of the heart, and that they are natural 
murderers, the sight of blood acting on them the 
same as champagne on a human being, and that 
but for the Cossacks Russia would have a popu- 
lation of loving subjects that would make it safe 
for the Little Father to go anywhere in Russia 
unattended, but with Cossacks ready to whip and 
murder and laugh at suffering the people are be- 
coming like men bitten by rabid dogs, and they 
froth at the mouth and have spasms and carry 
bombs up their sleeves, ready to blow up the mem- 
bers of the royal family, arid there you are. 

If you do not hear from me after next Sunday 
you can put dad's obituary and mine in the local 
papers and say we died of an overdose of Cossack. 
If we get through this revolution alive you will 
hear from me, but this is the last revolution I am 
going to attend. Yours, 

Hennery. 


251 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XXI. 

Dad Sees a Russian Revolution and Faints — The Bad 
Boy Arranges a Wolf Hunt — Dad Threatens 
to Throw the Boy to the Wolves. 

St. Petersburg, Russia. — My Dear Grocery- 
witz: Well, sir, dad and I have got too much of 
Russia the quickest of any two tourists you ever 
heard of. That skirmish we saw, the day the 
Russians blessed the Neva, and shot blank car- 
tridges filled with old iron at the czar, was not a 
marker to the trouble the next Sunday, when the 
working people marched to the Winter Palace, to 
present a petition to the “ Little Father.” 

We thought a revolution was like a play, and 
that it would be worth going miles to see. Dad 
was in South America once when there was a 
revolution, where more than a dozen greasers, 
with guns that wouldn't shoof, put on a dozen 
different kinds of uniforms, and yelled : “ Down 
with the government,” and frothed at the mouth, 
and drank buttermilk and yelled Spanish swear 
words, and acted brave, until a native soldier with 
white pajamas came out with a gun and shot one 
of the revolutionists in the thumb, when the revo- 


252 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


lution was suppressed and the next day the revo- 
lutionists were pounding stone, with cannon balls 
chained to their legs ; and dad thought a revolu- 
tion in Russia would be something like that, and 
that we could get on a front porch and watch it 
as it went by, and joke with the revolution, and 
throw confetti, like it was a carnival, but that 
Sunday that the Russian revolution was begun, 
we had enough blood to last us all our lives. 

We got a place sitting on an iron picket fence, 
and we saw the people coming up the street to- 
wards the Winter Palace, dressed mostly in 
blouses, and looking as innocent as a crowd of 
sewer diggers at home going up to the city hall 
to ask for a raise in wages of two shillings a day. 
Nobody had a gun, and no one would have known 
how to use a gun, and all looked like poor people 
going to prayers. There were troops everywhere, 
and every soldier acted as though he was afraid 
something would happen to spoil their chance of 
killing anybody. 'Jhe snow on the streets was 
clean and as white as the wings of a peace dove, 
and dad said the show was no better than a 
parade of laboring men at home on Labor day. 

Suddenly some officer yelled to the parade to 
stop, and the priest at the head of the procession, 
who was carrying a cross, slowed up a little, like 

253 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


the drum major of a band when the populace at 
home begins to throw eggs, but they kept on, and 
then the shooting began, and in a minute men, 
women and children were rolling in the snow, 
bleeding and dying, the marchers were too 
stunned to run, and the deadly guns kept on spit- 
ting fire, and the street was full of dead and 
dying, and then the Cossacks rode over the dead 
and sabered and knouted the living, and as the 
snow was patched with red blood, dad fainted 
away and fell off the picket fence, and hung by 
one pant leg, which caught on a picket, and 
crowds rushed in every direction, and it was an 
hour before I could get a drosky to haul dad to 
the hotel. 

Dad collapsed when he got to the hotel, and I 
got a doctor and a nurse, and for two days I had 
to watch the revolution alone, while dad had fits 
of remorse ’cause he brought me to such a charnel 
house, he said. 

Well, if you ever go anywhere, traveling for 
pleasure, do not go to Russia, because it is the 
saddest place on earth. I have seen no person 
smile or laugh in all the ten days we have been 
here, except a Cossack when he run a saber 
through a little girl, and his laugh was like the 
coyote on the prairie when he captures a little 

254 


t 






And hung by one pants leg. 







PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


lamb. The people look either heart-broken or 
snarly, like the people ‘ confined in an insane 
asylum at home. 

The czar, who a week ago was loved by the 
people, who believed if they went to him, as to 
their God, and appealed for guidance, is to-day 
hated by all, and instead of “ Nicholas the Good,” 
since he scampered away to a castle in the coun- 
try, and crawled under a bed, all the people call 
him “ the Little, Jack Rabbit,” and his fate is 
sealed, as a bomb will blow him into pieces so 
small they will have to be swept up in a dustpan 
for burial, maybe before dad and I can get out of 
Russia. 

Going to St. Petersburg for a pleasant outing 
is a good deal like visiting the Chicago stockyards 
to watch the bloody men kill the cattle, and the 
butchers in the stockyards, calloused against any 
feeling for suffering animals, are like the sol- 
diers here who shoot down their neighbors be- 
cause they are hired to do so. The murder of 
those unarmed working men, that Sunday, has 
changed a helpless, pleading people into anar- 
chists with deadly bombs in their blouses, where 
they were accustomed to carry black bread to sus- 
tain life, and with the menace of Japan in the 
far east* and an outraged people at home, Russia 
256 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


is in a bad way, and if I was the czar or a grand 
duke, I would find a woodchuck hole and arrange 
with the woodchuck for a furnished flat. 

I didn’t think there was going to be anything 
going on in Russia except bloodshed and bombs, 
and things to make you sorry that you were here, 



and I was willing to take chloroform and let them 
carry me home in a box, with my description on 
the cover, until the doctor told me that dad was 
in a condition of nervousness, that he needed 
something to happen to get his mind off of the 
awful scenes he had witnessed, and asked me if 
I couldn’t think of something to excite him and 

257 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

wake him up, and then dad said, after he got so 
he could go out doors : “ Hennery, you have al- 
ways been Johnny on the spot when I needed di- 
version, and I want you to take your brain apart, 
and oil the works, and see if you can’t conjure 
up something to get my blood circulating and my 
pores open for business, and anything you think 
of goes, and I swear I will not kick if you scare 
the boots off of me.” 

Well, that was right into my hand, and I set 
my mind to strike at four p. m. I had been out 
riding once with the Chicago man, in a sledge, 
with three horses abreast, all runaway horses, 
and the driver was a Cossack who lashed the 
horses into a run every smooth place he found 
in the road, and it was like running to a fire, so 
I got the Chicago fellow to go with me and we 
found the Cossack, and he was drunker than 
usual. There is a kind of liquor here called vodka, 
which skins wood alcohol and carbolic acid to a 
finish, and when a man is full of it he is so mad 
he wants to cut his own throat. This driver had 
put up sideboards on his neck and had two jags 
in one, and we hired him by the hour. 

I told the Chicago man the circumstances and 
that I had got to get dad out of his trance, and 
he said he would help me. When I was out rid- 

258 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


ing the day before I noticed that the road was 
full of great dane dogs, wolf hounds and stag 
hounds, which followed their master's sledges 
out in the country, and the dogs loafed around, 
hungry, looking for bones, and fighting each 
other, so I decided to get the dogs to chase our 



sledge and make dad think we were chased by 
wolves. I thought that would make dad stand 
without hitching, and it did. 

The Chicago man bought some cannon fire- 
crackers, and I bought a cow’s liver, and hitched 
it to a rope, and hid it in the back seat, and my 
Chicago friend and I took the back seat, and we 

259 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


got dad in the seat behind the driver, and started 
about an hour before dark out in the country, 
through a piece of woods that looked quite wolfy. 
On the way out the driver let his horses run away 
a few times, like you have seen in Russian pic- 
tures, and dad was beginning to sit up and take 
notice, and seemed to act like a man who expects 
every minute to be thrown over a precipice and 
mixed up with dead horses. Dad touched the 
driver once on the coat-tail and told him not to 
hurry so confounded fast, and the driver thought 
he was complaining because it was too slow, and 
he gave a Comanche yell and threw the lines into 
the air, and the horses just skedaddled, and run 
into a snow bank and tipped over the sledge, and 
piled us out on top of dad, but dad only said: 
“ This is getting good.” 

We righted up, and dad wanted to know where 
all the pups came from that we had passed. I 
had been throwing out pieces of meat into the 
road for a mile or so, and the dogs were having 
a picnic. It was getting pretty dark by this time, 
and we started back to town, and I threw out my 
liver, fastened to the rope, and the Chicago man, 
who had given the driver a drink of vodka when 
we tipped over, told him, in Russian, that when 
the dogs began to follow us, to get hold of the 

260 





PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


liver, to yell “ wolves,” and give the team the 
rein, for a five-mile run, and yell all the time, 
because we wanted to give the old gentleman a 
good time. 

Well, uncle, I would have given anything if 
you could have seen dad, when the dogs began 
to chase that liver, and bark and fight each other. 
The driver yelled something in Russian, and 
pointed back with his whip, the Chicago man 
said : “ My God, we are pursued by a pack of 

ravenous wolves, and there is no hope for us,” 
and I began to cry, and implored dad, if he loved 
me, to save me. Dad stood up in the sledge and 
looked back, and saw the wolves, and he was 
scared, but he said the only thing to do was to 
throw something overboard for them to be chew- 
ing on while we got away, but he sat down and 
pulled a robe over his head and his lips were 
moving, but I do not know whom he was address- 
ing. 

The Chicago man touched off a couple of can- 
non firecrackers behind the sledge, but that only 
kept the dogs back for a minute, and dad said 
probably the best thing to do was to throw me 
overboard and let them eat me, and I said: “Nay, 
nay, Pauline,” and then I think dad fainted away, 
for he never peeped again until the team had run 

262 


PECK'S BAD BOY ABROAD 


away a lot more, and I cut my liver rope, and 
when we got into the suburbs of St. Petersburg 
the dogs had overtaken the liver, and were fight- 
ing over it. 

The driver had to pull up his horses as we 
struck the town, and dad must have got a whiff 
of the driver's vodka, because he come to, and 
we got to the hotel all right, and I thought dad 
would simply die in his tracks, but the ride and 
the excitement did him good, and he wanted to 
buy a gun and go out wolf hunting the next day, 
but our tickets were bought and we shall get out 
of this terrible country to-morrow. 

Dad woke me up in the night and wanted to 
know if I saw him when he pulled his knife and 
wanted to get out and fight the pack of wolves 
single-handed. I am not much of a liar, but I 
told him I remembered it well, and it demon- 
strated to me that he was as brave a man as the 
czar, “ the Little Jack Rabbit," as his people call 
him. 

Well, thanks to my wolf hunt, dad is all right 
again, and now we shall go to some country 
where there is peace. I don't know where we 
will find it, but if such a country exists, your lit- 
tle Henry will catch on, if dad's money holds out. 

Yours, covered with Gore. Hennery. 

263 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XXII. 

Dad Wears His Masonic Fez in Constantinople — They 
Find the Turks Sensitive on the Dog Question — 

A College Yell for the Sultan Sends Him 
Into a Fit. 

Constantinople, Turkey. — My Dear Old 
“ Shriner” — We got out of Russia just in time 
to keep from being arrested or blown up with a 
bomb. Dad wanted to go to Moscow, because he 
saw a picture once of Moscow being destroyed 
by fire by Napoleon, or somebody, and he wanted 
to see if they had ever built the town up again, 
but I felt as though something serious was going 
to happen in that country if we didn’t look out, 
and so I persuaded dad to go to Turkey, and the 
day we started for Constantinople we got the 
news that the Nihilists had thrown a bomb under 
the carriage of the Grand Duke Sergius and 
blew him and the carriage into small pieces not 
bigger than a slice of summer sausage, and they 
had to sweep his remains up in a dustpan and 
bury them in a two-quart fruit jar. Wouldn’t 
that jar you? 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

When dad heard about that you couldn’t have 
kept him in Russia on a bet, and so we let the 
authorities have all the money we had, giving 
some to each man who held us up, until we got 
out of the country, and then we took the first long 
breath we had taken since we struck the God- 
forsaken country of the czar. If the bombs hold 
out I do not think there will be a quorum left 
in Russia in a year, either czars, dukes or any- 
thing except peasants on the verge of starvation 
and workingmen who have not the heart to work. 
I wouldn’t take the whole of Russia as a gift, 
and have to dodge bombs night and day. 

Say, old man, you never dreamed that I knew 
all about you and dad joining the Masons that 
time, but I watched you and dad giving each 
other signs and grips, and whispering passwords 
into each other’s ears, in the grocery, nights, 
after you had locked up. I thought, at the time, 
that you and dad were planning a burglary, but 
when you both went to the lodge one night and 
stayed till near morning, and dad came home 
with a red Turkish fez and told nia that you and 
he had joined the shrine, which was the highest 
degree in Masonry, and you and he were nobles, 
and all that rot, I was on to you bigger than a 
house, and you couldn’t fool me when you and 

265. 



When Dad put his hand on her shoulder. 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

dad winked at each other and talked about cross- 
ing the hot sands of the desert. 

Well, dad brought his red fez along, ’cause I 
think he expected he would meet shriners all over 
the world, that he could borrow money of. When 
we struck Constantinople and dad saw that every 
last one of the Turks wore a red fez, he felt as 
though he had got among shriners, and he got 
his fez out of his trunk and he wears it all the 
time. 

Dad acts as familiar with the Turks here as 
though he owned a harem. We go to the low 
streets, about as wide as a street car, where 
Turks are selling things, with dad wearing his 
fez, and he begins to make motions and give 
grand hailing signs of distress, and the Turks 
look at him as though he had robbed a bank, and 
they charge enormous prices for everything, and 
dad pays with a smile, thinking his brother Ma- 
sons are fairly giving things away. He looks 
upon all men who wear the fez as his brothers, 
and they look at him as though he was crazy in 
the head. 

The only trouble is that dad insists on talking 
to the women here without an introduction, and 
a woman in Turkey had rather die than have a 
Christian dog look at her. Dad was buying some 

267 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


wormy figs of a merchant, who was seated on 
the floor of his shop, and giving him signs, when 
a curtain behind the Turk was pulled one side 
and a woman with beautiful eyes and her face 
covered with a veil, came out with a cup of coffee 
for the Turk. Dad shook hands with her, and 
said: “ Your husband and I belong to the same 
lodge,” and he was going to go inside and visit 
the family, when the woman drew a small dag- 
ger out of the folds of her dress, and the Turk 
drew one of these scimeters, and it looked for a 
moment as though I was going to be a half or- 
phan, particularly when dad put his hand on her 
shoulder and petted it, and smiled one of those 
masher smiles which he uses at home, and said: 
“ My good woman, you must not get in the habit 
of jabbing your husband’s friends with this 
crooked cutlery, though to be killed by so hand- 
some a woman would indeed be a sweet death,” 
but the bluff did not go, and the woman disap- 
peared behind the curtain, and dad had the fran- 
tic husband to deal with. 

I have never seen a human being look as mur- 
derous as that Turk did as he drew his thumb 
across the blade of his knife, drew up his lip and 
snarled like a dog that has been bereaved of a 
promising bone by a brother dog that was larger. 

268 



“ U-Rah-Rah-Wis-Con-Sin-Zip-boom-Ah, There’ll be a hot time 

in the oid town tonight.” 








































' • 
























PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


The Turk looked through his teeth, and his eyes 
seemed to act like small arc lights, that were to 
show him where to cut dad, and dad began to 
turn pale, and looked scared. 

“ Give him the grand hailing sign of distress/’ 
said I as dad leaned against a barrel of dried 
prunes. Dad said he had forgotten the sign, and 
then I told him the only way out of it, alive, 
would be to buy something, so dad picked up a 
little jim-crack* worth about ten cents, and gave 
the Turk a five-dollar gold piece, and while the 
Turk went in behind the curtain to get the change 
I told dad now was the time to skip, and you 
ought to have seen dad make a sprint out the 
door and around a corner, and up another street, 
while I followed him, and we got away from the 
danger of being stabbed, but dad got his foot 
into it again before we had gone a block. 

Nobody in Constantinople ever hurries, or 
goes off a walk, so when the people saw an old 
man, with a fez on his head, running amuck, as 
they say here, followed by a beautiful boy, they 
began to crawl into their holes, thinking dad was 
crazy, but when we were passing a sausage store, 
where about 20 dogs were asleep in the street, 
and dad kicked half a dozen dogs and yelled, “ get 
out, you hounds,” that settled it, and they knew 

269 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


he was wrong in the head, and they yelled for the 
police, and we were pulled for fast driving, and 
taken before a Turkish justice of the peace, fol- 
lowed by the whole crowd. 

The justice did not wear a fez, but had on a 



turban, so dad did not give him any signs, but 
after jabbering a while they sent for an inter- 
preter, who could talk pigeon English, and then 
dad had a trial, and I acted as his lawyer. I told 
about how dad had tried to be kind and genial 

270 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


to another man’s wife, and how, in his hurry to 
get away from the murderous husband he fell 
over a mess of dogs, and that he was a distin- 
guished American, who was in Turkey to nego- 
tiate a loan to the sultan. 

Say, that fixed them, and they all made salams 
to dad, and bowed all over themselves, and the 
justice of the peace prayed to Allah, and the in- 
terpreter said we could go, but to be careful about 
touching a Turkish woman or a dog, particu- 
larly a dog, as the Turks were very sensitive on 
the dog question. So we went out of the court- 
room and wandered around the town, and you 
can bet that dad didn’t look at any more women, 
though they were everywhere with veils that cov- 
ered their faces so nothing but their eyes could 
be seen. 

Gee, but you never saw such eyes as these 
Turkish women have. They are big and black, 
and they go right through you, and clinch on the 
other side. Dad says the facilities for getting 
into trouble are better in Constantinople than 
any place we have been, as the men look like 
bandits and the women look like executioners. 
Dad thanked me for helping him out of that 
scrape by claiming he was the agent of a financial 
syndicate that wanted to lend money to the sul- 
271 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

tan. If I had said dad was a collecting agency, 
to make the sultan pay up, they would have sen- 
tenced him to be boiled in oil. 

Well, we thought we had been in trouble be- 
fore, but we are in it now worse than ever. We 
heard at the hotel that at 1 1 o’clock in the morn- 
ing the sultan would pass by in a carriage, with 
an escort, on the way to a mosque, to pray to 
Allah, and everybody could see the sultan, so 
we got a place on a balcony, and at the appointed 
time the procession came in sight. It was impos- 
ing, but solemn, and the people on both sides of 
the street acted like they do in America when 
the funeral of a great man is passing. No man 
spoke, and all looked as though they expected, if 
they moved, to be arrested and have a stone tied 
to their feet and thrown into the Bosphorus, the 
way they kill one of the sultan’s wives when she 
flirts with a stranger. 

We watched the soldiers, and finally the car- 
riage of the sultan came, and in it was a dried 
up man, with liver complaint, with a nose like 
an eagle, and eyes like shoe buttons. He looked 
as though death would be a relief, and yet he 
seemed afraid of it, and there was no sound of 
welcome, such as there would be if Roosevelt was 


272 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


riding down Michigan avenue at Chicago, on the 
way to the stockyards to pray to Armour, in- 
stead of to Allah. 

You could have heard a pin drop. I said: 
“ Dad, this is too solemn, even for a sultan. Let's 



Another Turk took me by the ear and stretched it out. 

give him the university yell, and show that 
mummy that he has got two friends in Constan- 
tinople, anyway." “ Here she goes," says dad, 
and we leaned over the railing, just as the sul- 
tan's carriage was right in front of us and not 
ten feet away, and in that oppressive silence dad 
and I opened up, “ U-Rah-Rah-Wis-Con-Sin, zip- 

273 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


boom- Ah ! ” and then we started to sing, 

“ There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town To- 
Night.” 

Well, if any man in the crowd had touched off 
a bomb, there could have been no greater con- 
sternation. The sultan turned pale, as pale as 
so yellow a man could, and became faint, and fell 
over into the arms of a general who sat beside 
him, the Bazi Bazouks on horseback began to 
ride up and down the street, the crowd scattered, 
the sultan’s carriage was turned around and 
rushed back to the palace, with the ruler of Tur- 
key having a fit, and about a hundred soldiers 
came up on the veranda, where dad and I had 
broke up the procession, and they lit on dad like 
buzzards on a dead horse, and took possession 
of the hotel, and began to search our baggage. 

One Turk choked dad until his tongue hung 
out of his mouth, and another took me by the 
ear and stretched it out so it was long as a mule’s 
ear, and they took us to a bastile and dad says 
it is all up with us now, because they will drown 
us like a mess of kittens in a bag, and all because 
we woke them up with a football yell in the wrong 
place. 

Well, we might as well wind up our career here 
274 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


as anywhere. Good-by, old man. You will see 
our obituary in the papers. 

Your repentant 

Hennery. 


275 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Meet the Cream of the 

Harem — “Little Egypt” Does a Dancing Stunt — 
The Sultan Wants to Send Fifty Wives to 
the President. 

Constantinople, Turkey. — My Dear Grocer- 
pasha: When I wrote you last I thought you 
would be in mourning for dad and I before this, 
as there seemed nothing for the Turks to do but 
to kill us after we had stampeded the sultan and 
all his soldiers by giving them a university yell, 
but after we had been confined in a sort of jail 
over night, dad and I had a heart to heart talk, 
and my diplomacy saved us for the time being. I 
told dad that what we wanted to do was to tell 
the Turks that dad represented the American peo- 
ple, and had a communication to make to the sul- 
tan personally, which would make him rich and 
happy. 

Well, say, they bit like a bass, and the next 
day they took us before the sultan at the palace. 
Dad dug up a package of blank gold mining 
stock in a mine that he was going to promote, 
though the mine was only a small hole in the 

276 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

ground, and the stock had been offered for one 
cent a share, the par value being a hundred dol- 
lars, so a man who got a share for a cent would, 
when the mine got to paying, get a hundred dol- 
lars for every cent he invested. 



The President said he must bring his folks. 

Dad filled out one of the stock certificates for 
1,000,000 shares, which would represent a capital 
equal to all the debts of Turkey, and we went be- 
fore the sultan, and we couldn’t have been treated 
better if we had owned a brewery. Dad told his 
story to the sultan through an interpreter, while 

2 77 



PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

I looked around at the gorgeous surroundings 
and tried to think of something to do to wake 
them up. 

Dad said he came right fresh from the Ameri- 
can people, and was authorized by his mining 
company to present the sultan with untold mil- 
lions, for pure love of the Turkish people, whom 
they had seen riding and leading camels at the 
Chicago world’s fair, and dad produced the stock 
certificate for 1,000,000 shares of stock in the 
Golden Horn Gold Mining and Smelting com- 
pany, and took out a handful of $20 gold pieces 
and showed them to the crowd as specimens of 
gold that came from our mine. 

He said our people did not expect anything in 
return, but just desired the good will of the Turk- 
ish empire. He said that President Roosevelt de- 
sired him to present his warmest regards to the 
sultan, and to invite him to visit America, and if 
he would consent to do so, an American war ves- 
sel would be furnished for him and the white 
house would be turned over to him for his harem, 
and dad said the president wanted him particu- 
larly to impress upon the sultan that if he came 
he must bring his folks, all his wives that would 
be apt to size up for beauty with our American 
women. 


278 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


Well, you ought to have seen that sickly look- 
ing sultan brace up when dad handed him the 
millions of mining stock, and he grabbed the 
paper like an old clothes buyer would grab a 
dress suit that a wife had sold for 60 cents, be- 
longing to her husband. He also wanted to see 
the gold that dad had shown as coming from the 
mine, and when dad showed him the yellow boys 
he took them as souvenirs and put them in his 
girdle, and then I thought dad would faint, but 
he kept his nerve like a poker player betting on 
a bobtail flush. 

The sultan asked so many questions about 
America that I was afraid dad would get all 
balled up, but he kept his nerve, and lied as though 
he was on the witness stand trying to save his 
life. Dad told the sultan he was authorized by 
the American people to inquire into the indus- 
tries of Turkey, and what he particularly desired 
was an insight into the harems, as a national 
institution, because many American people were 
gradually adopting the customs of the orient, and 
he desired to report to congress as to whether 
we should adopt the customs of Turkey with her 
dried prunes and dates with worms in, and her 
attar of roses made of pig’s lard; her fez, to cure 
279 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

baldness, and her outlandish pants and peaked 
red Morocco shoes, and her harems. 

The sultan said he would like to show us a little 
bunch of the cream of the harem, who would do 
a stunt in the way of dancing, to celebrate the 
good feeling of the American people, and the 
visit of the distinguished statesman and gold 
miner to his realm, and dad said the sultan 
couldn't turn his stomach with no cream of the 
harem, only they must keep their hands off him, 
and the sultan promised he should be as safe as a 
“ unique," whatever that is. 

Dad and I had hired knee breeches and things 
of a masquerade ball store, and we didn't look 
half bad when the crowd of shieks and things 
formed a crescent around the sultan, who sat in 
a sort of barber's chair with an awning over it, 
and they sounded a hewgag or something, and 
about a dozen pretty fine looking females, dressed 
like the ballet in a vaudeville show, came in and 
began to dance before the sultan. 

Dad stood it first rate until a girl got on the 
carpet barefooted and began one of those willowy 
sort of dances that nearly broke up the Chicago 
fair, when people left the buildings filled with 
the work of the world’s artists, in all lines of 
progress, and went to the Midway in a body to 

280 




PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


see “ Little Egypt,” but when this dancer waltzed 
up to dad and wiggled in a foreign language, dad 
sashayed up to her and I couldn’t hold him back. 

He was just getting warmed up to “ balance 
to partners,” when a frown came over the sul- 
tan’s face and he looked cross at dad, and then 
the hewgag sounded, and the girls scattered out 
of a side door and dad wanted to follow, but I 
held him by the coat, and it was over. I think 
those girls were the only ones in the whole harem 
that were good looking. 

Dad breathed hard a little from his exercise, 
and said he was ready to inspect the stock, and 
the sultan detailed a tall negro, with a face dried 
up like a mummy, and we started out through 
the harem, dad pulling the long hair on the side 
of his head over his bald spot, and throwing his 
shoulders back and drawing in his stomach to 
make him look young. 

Well, say, there is nothing about a harem, 
much different from keeping house at home, ex- 
cept that there is more of it. The idea people 
get of harems is that the women are all young 
and beautiful, and that they sit around a swim- 
ming tank and play guitars and keep the flies off 
the man who owns the place, while he smokes 
the vile Turkish tobacco burning in a jardiniere, 

282 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


through a section of rubber hose, and goes to 
sleep like a Chinaman smoking opium, and that 
they drink rare wines and dance with bangles on 
their legs and ropes of pearls on their necks and 
arms. 

I have seen alleged imitations of a Turkish 
harem on the stage, with American girls doing 
the acting, and it would make you feel as though 
you would invest in a harem when you got old 
enough, but, gee, when you see a regular harem, 
run by an up-to-date Turk, you think of the Mor- 
mon apostle who has 40 wives of all ages, from 
70 down to a 1 6-year-old hired girl, with a hair- 
lip and warts on her thumbs. This harem was 
like a big stock barn in the states, with a big 
room to exercise the colts, and box stalls for the 
different wives and their families to live in and 
do their own cooking and washing. 

Instead of sitting by a bath playing a harp, 
the poor old wives stand by a washtub and play 
tunes on the washboard, and scrub, and take care 
of children. I thought the custom of spanking 
children was an American institution, but it is 
as old as the ages, for I saw a Turkish mother 
grab up a child that had lifted a kitten by the 
tail, and take it across her knee and give it a few 
with a red hand covered with soapsuds, and the 

283 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


young Turk yelled bloody murder, just like an 
American kid, and then sat down on its knees, so 
the spanking wouldn’t hurt, and called its mother 
names in a language I couldn’t understand, but 
I knew what the child said, by instinct. Dad 
started to interfere, because he is a member of 
the humane society, but the unique that was show- 
ing us around saved dad’s life by pushing him 
along, before the woman got a chance to brain 
him with the washboard. 

The women mostly had on these baggy Turk- 
ish trousers, like the Zouaves wear, and a jacket, 
and a cloth around their heads, and they acted 
as though if the next meal came along all right 
they would be in luck. We saw a few women 
pretty white, and they were Circassian slaves, 
with big eyes and hoops in their ears, and a little 
different clothes on, but there were none that dad 
would buy at an auction, or at a bargain sale, if 
they were marked down to 99 cents. 

We passed one woman running an American 
sewing machine, and dad said he’d bet she was 
an American, and he went up to her and said: 
“ Hello, sis! ” She stopped the machine, looked 
up at dad with a sort of Bowery -expression, and 
said : “ Gwan, Chauncey Depew, you old peach, 
or I’ll have you pinched,” and the unique took 

284 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

dad by the arm and pulled him along real spry, 
but he hung back and looked over his shoulder 
at the woman, but she went on sewing, and dad 
said to me: “ Well, wouldn't that frost you?” 
And we y went on making the inspection. 

I don't think I ever saw so many children, out- 
side of an orphan asylum, all about the same size 
and all looking exactly alike. They all had the 
same beady black eyes that look as though they 
were afraid of getting caught in a trap, like 
muskrats, and their noses had the same inquiring 
appearance, as though the owner was speculating 
as to how much money the visitors had in their 
pockets, and whether it was fastened in. Race 
suicide is impossible in Turkey, but a race of 
bandits is growing up that will let no foreigners 
with a pocketbook escape. 

It took us an hour to go through the harem, 
and it was more like going through the quarters 
of the working women of a home laundry in the 
tenement district of a large city, than a comic 
opera, as we had been led to expect by what we 
had read of harems. When we went into the 
harem I think dad was going to insist on having 
the women dance for him, while he sat on a 
throne and threw kisses at the most beautiful 
women in all the world, but before we had got 

285 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


around all the box stalls I think if any of them 
had started to dance dad would have stampeded 
in a body. 

We finally got back to the great marble room, 
where the sultan was sleeping in a stuffed chair, 
surrounded by his staff, and one of them woke 
him up, and he asked dad what he thought of the 
home life of a crowned head, and dad said it beat 
anything he had ever seen, and he should recom- 
mend to his government that the harem system 
be adopted in America, and actually the sultan 
seemed pleased. He said as an evidence of his 
love for America he wanted to present to the 
president, through dad, 50 of his wives, and if 
dad would indicate where he wanted them deliv- 
ered, they would be there, Johnny on the spot, or 
words to that effect. 

At first I thought dad would faint away, but 
I whispered to him that it would be discourteous 
to decline a present, after giving the sultan a 
gold mine, and that may be the old man would 
be so mad, if he declined the wives, that he would 
tie stones to our legs and sink us in the Bosphor- 
ous, so dad rallied and said, on behalf of his gov- 
ernment, he would accept the kindly and thought- 
ful gift of his highness, and that he would cable 
for a war vessel to take the wives to his own 

286 



Of all the stampedes you ever saw. 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


America, and he would notify the sultan when 
to round them up and load them on the vessel. 

Well, sir, I do not know what possessed me to 
make a scene, before we got out of the presence 
of the sultan, but it all came to me sudden, like 
an inspiration comes to a poet. I had been eat- 
ing some fruit that I bought in a paper bag, and 
when I had eaten the last of it, I wondered what 
I would do with the bag, and then I thought what 
fun it would be to blow the bag up, and suddenly 
burst it, when all was still. So I blowed up the 
bag, so it was as hard as a bladder, and tied a 
string around the neck, and waited. I did not 
think how afraid everybody in these' old coun- 
tries is of bombs, or I never would have done it, 
honestly. 

The sultan was signing some papers, and look- 
ing out of the corners of his eyes to see if any- 
body was present who was suspicious, and dad 
was getting ready to make a salam, and back 
out of the presence of the ruler of Turkey, when 
I got behind some of the officials who were watch- 
ing the sultan, and I laid my paper bag on the 
marble floor, and it was as still as death, and all 
you could hear was the scratching of the pen, 
when I jumped up in the air as though I had a 
fit, and yelled “ Allah, ” and came down with my 

288 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

whole weight on the paper bag, and of all the 
stampedes you ever saw, that was the worst. 

You know what a noise it makes to bust a paper 
bag. Well, this was the toughest old bag I ever 
busted, and it sounded like a cannon fired down 
cellar somewhere, and the air was full of dust, 
and before I could get up the sultan had tipped 
over the table and run yelling into another room, 
praying to “ Allah,” and all the staff had lit out 
for tall timber, and there was nobody left but 
dad and the unique and myself, and the unique 
took dad by the arm and started for the door, 
and we were fired out. 

As I went out of the room I looked around, 
and there was a Turk’s head sticking out of every 
door to see how many had been killed by the 
bomb, and as we got out doors, dad said “ Now 
we have to get out of Turkey before night, or 
we die. Me for Egypt, boy, if we can catch a 
boat before we are drawn and quartered.” So 
here goes for Cairo, Egypt. Yours only, 

Hennery, 


289 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Arrive in Cairo — At the 
Hotel They Meet Some Egyptian Princesses — 
Dan Rides a Camel to the Pyramids and 
Meets with Difficulties. 

Cairo, Egypt. — My Dear Old Irish Vegetable: 
Gee, but you ought to see dad and I right now at 
a hotel, waiting for a chance at a room, when a 
bride and groom get ready to vacate it, and go 
somewhere else. This hotel is full of married 
people who look scared whenever there is a new 
arrival, and I came pretty near creating a panic 
by going into the parlor of the hotel, where a 
dozen couples were sitting around making goo- 
goo eyes at each other, and getting behind a 
screen and, in a disguised voice, shouting, “ I 
know all ! Prepare to defend yourself ! ” 

The women turned pale and some said, “ At 
last! At last! ” while others got faint in the head, 
and some fell on the bosoms of their husbands and 
said: “ Don’t shoot !” You see, most of these 
wives had husbands somewhere else that might 
be looking for them. I have warned dad not to 
be seen conversing with a woman, or he may be 


2QO 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

shot by a husband who is on her trail, or by the 
husband she has with her. 

Well, sir, of all the trips we have had any- 
where, the trip from Constantinople here was 
the limit. For two or three days we were on 
dinky steamboats with Arabs, Turks, negroes and 
all nationalities camping on deck, full of fleas, and 
with cholera germs on them big enough to pick 
like blueberries, and all of the passengers were . 
dirty and eat things that would make a dog in 
America go mad. The dog biscuit that are fed 
to American dogs would pass as a delicate con- 
fection on the menu of any steamboat we struck, 
and I had rather lie down in a barn yard with 
a wet dog for a pillow and a cast-off blanket from 
a smallpox hospital for a bed, than to occupy the 
bridal chamber of any steamboat we struck. 

And then the ride across the desert by rail to 
reach Cairo was the worst in the world. Pas- 
sengers in rags, going to Mecca, or some other 
place of worship, eating cheese a thousand years 
old made from old goat’s milk, and dug from the 
Pyramids too late to save it, was what surrounded 
us, and the sand storm blew through the cars 
laden with germs of the plague, and stuck to us 
so tight you couldn’t get it off with sandpaper, 
291 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

and when we got here all we have had to do is 
to bathe the dirt off in layers. 

It takes nine baths to get down to American 
epidermis, and the last bath has a jackplane to 
go with it, and a thing they scale fish with. But 



we are all right now, with rooms in the hotel, and 
rested, and when we go home we are going to be 
salted down and given chloroform and shipped 
as mummies. Dad insists that he will never cross 
a desert or an ocean again, and I don’t know 
what is to become of us. Anyway, we are going 
to enjoy ourselves until we are killed off. 


292 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

The first two days we just looked about Cairo, 
and saw the congress of nations, for there is 
nothing just like this town anywhere. There are 
people from all quarters of the globe, the most 
outlandish and the most up-to-date. This place 
is an asylum for fakirs and robbers, a place where 
defaulters, bribers, murderers, swindlers and 
elopers are safe, as there seems to be no extradi- 
tion treaty that cannot be overcome by paying 
money to the officials. I found that out the first 
day, and told dad we should have no standing in 
the society of Egypt unless the people thought 
he had committed some gigantic crime and fled 
his country. 

Dad wanted to know how it would strike me 
if it was noised about the hotel that he had robbed 
a national bank, but I told him there would be 
nothing uncommon or noticeable about robbing 
a bank, as half the tourists were bank defaulters, 
so he would have to be accused of something 
startling, so we decided that dad should be 
charged with being the principal thing in the 
Standard Oil Company, and that he had under- 
ground pipe lines running under several states, 
gathering oil away from the people who owned 
it, and that at the present time he was worth a 
billion dollars, and his income was $9,000,000 


293 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


every little while, and, by ginger, you ought to 
see the people bow down to him. Say, common 
bank robbers and defaulters just fell over them- 
selves to get acquainted with dad, and to carry 
out the joke, I put some kerosene oil on dad’s 
handkerchief, and that clinched it, for everybody 
loves the smell of a perfume that represents a bil- 
lion dollars. 

All the women wanted to dance with dad in 
the hotel dance, and because they thought I must 
be heir to all the oil billions, they wanted to hold 
me on their laps, and stroke my hair, as though 
I was it. I guess we are going to have every- 
thing our own way here, and if dad does not get 
eloped with by some Egyptian princess, I shall 
be mistaken. The Egyptians are pretty near 
being negroes, and wear bangles in their ears, 
and earrings on their arms. You take it in the 
dark, and let a princess put her arms around you, 
and sort of squeeze you, and you can’t tell but 
what she is white, only there is an odor about 
them like “ Araby the blessed,” but in the light 
they are only negroes, a little bleached, with red 
paint on their cheeks. If I was going to marry 
an Egyptian woman, I would take her to Nor- 
way, or up towards the north pole, where it is 
night all day, and you wouldn’t realize that you 

294 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


were married to a colored woman. To be around 
among these Egyptians is a good deal like having 
a pass behind the scenes at the play of Ben Hur 
in New York, only here the dark and dangerous 
women are the real thing, instead of being white 
girls with black paint on. 

We have just got back from the pyramids, and 
dad is being treated for spinal meningitis, on ac- 
count of riding a camel. I never tried harder to 
get dad to go anywhere on the cars than I did to 
get him to go to the pyramids by rail, as a mil- 
lionaire should, but he said he was going to break 
a camel to the saddle, and then buy him and take 
him home for a side show. So we went down to 
the camel garage and hired a camel for dad, 
and four camels for the arabs and things he 
wanted’ for an escort, and a jackass for me. 
There were automobiles and carriages, and trol- 
leys, and everything that we could have hired, 
and been comfortable for the ten-mile ride, but 
dad was mashed on the camel, and he got it. 

Well, sir, it was not one of these world’s fair 
camels that lay down for you to get on, and then 
got up on the installment plan, and chuck you 
forward and aft, but a proud Egyptian camel that 
stands up straight and makes you climb up on a 
stepladder. 


295 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


Dad got along up the camel’s ribs, when the 
stepladder fell, and he grabbed hold of the hair 
on the two humps, and the humps were loose and 
they lopped over on the side, and it must have 
hurt the camel’s feelings to have his humps pulled 



down, so he reached around his head and took a 
mouthful out of the seat of dad’s pants, and dad 
yelled to the camel to let go, and the Arabs ampu- 
tated the camel from dad’s trousers, and pushed 
dad up on top with a bamboo pole with a crotch 
296 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


in it, and when dad got settled between the humps 
he said, “ Let ’er go,” and we started. 

Dad could have had a camel with a platform 
on top, and an awning, but he insisted on taking 
his camel raw, and he sat there between those 
humps, his trousers worked up towards his knees, 
showing his red socks and blue drawers, and his 
face got pale from sea sickness, and the red, white 
and blue colors made me think of a fourth of July 
at home. We went out of town like a wild west 
show, and dad seemed happy, except that every 
time an automobile went whizzing along, dad’s 
camel got the jumps and waltzed sideways out 
into the sandy desert, and chewed at dad’s socks, 
so part of the time dad had to draw up his legs 
and sit on one hump and put his shoes on the 
other hump. The Arabs on the other cam- 
els would ride up alongside and steer dad’s 
camel back into the road, by sticking sharp sticks 
into the camel, and the animal would yawn and 
groan and make up faces at me on my jackass, 
and finally dad wanted to change works with me 
and ride my jackass, but I told him we had left 
the stepladder back at Cairo, so dad hung to his 
mountainous steed, but the dust blew so you 
couldn’t see, and it was getting monotonous when 
the queerest thing happened. 

297 


PECK’S BAH BOY ABROAD 

You have heard that camels can fill up with 
water and go for a week without asking for any 
more. Well, I guess the week was up, and it 
was time to load the camels with water, for as 
we came to the Nile every last camel made a rush 
for the river, and they went in like a yoke of oxen 
on a stampede, and waded in clear up to the 
humps, and began to drink, and dad yelled for 
a life preserver and pulled his feet up on top and 
sat there like a frog on a pond lily leaf. 

My jackass only stepped his feet in the edge, 
and dad wanted me to swim my jackass out to 
the camel and let him fall ofif onto the jack, but 
I knew dad would sink my jack in a minute, and 
I wouldn't go in the river. Well, the camels 
drank about an hour, with dad sitting there medi- 
tating, and then the dragomen got them out, and 
we started ofif for the pyramids, which were in 
plain sight like the pictures you have seen, with 
palm trees along the Nile, and Arabs camping 
on the bank, and it looked as though everything 
was going to be all right, when suddenly dad's 
camel stopped dead still and wouldn't move a 
foot, and all the rest of the camels stopped, closed 
their eyes and went to sleep, and the Arabs went 
to sleep, and dad and the jackass and I were ap- 
298 





Started on a stampede. 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

parently the only animals in Egypt that were 
awake. 

Dad kicked his camel in the ribs, but it wouldn’t 
budge. He asked me if I could’t think up some 
way to start the procession, and I stopped my 
jackass and thought a minute, and told dad I had 
it. I had bought some giant fire crackers and 
roman candles at Cairo, with which I was going 
to fire a salute on top of the biggest pyramid, to 
celebrate for old America, and I told dad what 
I had got, and I thought if I got ofif my jackass 
and fired a salute there in the desert it would wake 
them up. 

Dad said, “ all right, let ’er go, but do it sort 
of easy, at first, so not to overdo it,” and I got 
my artillery ready. Say, you can’t fire ofif fire- 
works easy, you got to touch a match to ’em and 
dodge and take your chances. Well, I scratched 
a match and lit the giant fire cracker, and put 
it under the hind legs of dad’s camel, and when 
it got to fizzing I lit my roman candle, and as the 
fire cracker exploded like a 1 6-inch gun, my 
roman candle began to spout balls of fire, and I 
aimed one at each camel, and the whole push 
started on a stampede for the pyramids, the cam- 


300 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

els groaning, the Arabs praying to Allah, dad 
yelling to stop ’er, and my jackass led the bunch, 
and I was left in the desert to pick up the hats. 

I guess I will have to tell you the rest of the 
tragedy in my next letter. 

Yours with plenty of sand, 

Hennery. 


301 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XXV. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Climb the Pyramids — The 

Bad Boy Lights a Cannon Cracker in Raineses’ 
Tomb — They Flee from Egypt in Disguise. 

Cairo, Egypt. — My Dear Old Geezer : I broke 
off my last letter in sight of the pyramids, when 
I was left alone on the desert, my jackass having 
stampeded with the camels, on account of my fire- 
works, and I presume you think I was all in, 
but I got to the pyramids before the stampeded 
caravan did. I saw a car coming along, and I just 
got aboard and in ten minutes I was at the base 
of the big pyramid, and the camel with dad on 
between the humps, was humping himself half a 
mile away, trying to get there, and the other cam- 
els, with the Arabs, were stretched out like horses 
in a race, behind, and my jackass was right next 
to dad's camel, braying and occasionally kicking 
dad’s camel in the slats. 

There were about a hundred tourists around 
the stampede of the camels, and I told them my 
the base of the big pyramid, all looking towards 
dad, the great American millionaire, was on the 
runaway camel in advance, and asked them to 


302 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


form a line across the trail and save dad, but 
when the camel came nearer I was ashamed of 
dad. He had his arms around the front hump 
of the camel, and he was yelling for help to stop 
his menagerie, and his legs were flying in the 
air, and every time they came down they kicked 
a hole in the side of the camel. 

Well, sir, I thought dad was a brave man, but 
he blatted like a calf, and when the camel stopped 
and went to eating a clump of grass dad opened 
his eyes, and when he saw that the procession 
had stopped he rolled off his camel like a bag of 
wheat, and stuck in the sand and began to say 
a prayer, but when he saw me standing there, 
laughing, he stopped praying, and said to me: 
“I thought you were blown up when that jackass 
kicked the can of dynamite. You have more lives 
than a cat. Now, get a hustle on you and we will 
climb that pyramid, and then quit this blasted 
country/' and dad sat down on a hummock and 
began to pull himself together, after the most 
fearful ride he ever had. He said the camel loped, 
trotted, galloped, single-footed and shied all at 
the same time, and when one hump was not jam- 
ming him in the back the other hump was kick- 
ing him in the stomach, and if he had a gun he 

303 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

would shoot the camel, and the Arabs, and bust 
up the show. 

By the time dad got so he could stand up with- 
out leaning against a pyramid the Arabs came 
up and they all talked at once, and drew knives, 



and it seemed as though they were blaming dad 
for something. We found an interpreter among 
the tourists, and he talked with the Arabs, and 
pointing to the camel dad had ridden, which was 
stretched out on the sand like he was dead, he 
told dad the Arabs wanted him to pay for the 


304 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


camel he had ridden to death, and foundered by 
letting it drink a wagon load of water, and then 
entered in a race across the desert, and the inter- 
preter said dad better pay, or they would kill 
him. 

Dad settled for the camel for a hundred dol- 
lars, and a promise of the skin of the camel, which 
he was going to take home and have stuffed. 
Then a man who pretended to be a justice of the 
peace had dad arrested for driving off of a walk, 
and he was fined $10 and costs for that, and then 
all the Arabs stuck him for money for one thing 
and another, and when he had settled all around 
and paid extra for not riding back to Cairo on 
the camel, we got ready to climb up the pyramid. 
Dad said he wouldn’t ride that camel back to 
Cairo for a million dollars, for he was split up 
so his legs began where his arms left off, and 
he was lame from Genesis to Revelations. 

But I never saw such a lot of people to pray as 
these pirates are. Just before they rob a man 
they get down on their knees on a rug, and mum- 
ble something to some god, and after they have 
got you robbed good and plenty, they get down 
and pray while they are concealing the money 
they took from you. Gee, but when I get home 
I am going to steer the train robbers and burglars 

305 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


onto the idea of always being on praying grounds. 

Well, I told dad he hadn’t better try to climb 
up the pyramid, that I would go up,* ’cause I 
could climb like a goat, and when I got up to 
the top I would fire a salute, so everybody would 
know that a star spangled American was on deck, 
but dad said he would go up or quit the tourist 
business. He said he had come thousands of 
miles to climb the pyramids, and sit in the shad- 
ow of the spinks, and by ginger he was going 
to do it, and so we started. 

Well, say, each stone is about four feet high, 
and dad couldn’t get up without help, so an Arab 
would go up a stone ahead, and take hold of 
dad’s hands, and two more Arabs would get 
their shoulders under dad’s pants, and shove, and 
he would get up gradually. We got about half 
way up when dad weakened, and said he didn’t 
care so much about pyramids as he thought he 
did, and he was ready to quit, but the guide and 
some of the tourists said we were right near 
the entrance to the great tomb of the kings, and 
that we better go in and at least make a formal 
call on the crowned heads, and so we went in, 
through dark passages, with little candles that the 
guides carried, and up and down stairs, until fin- 
ally we got into a big room that smelled like a 

306 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

morgue, with bats and evil looking things all 
around, and I felt creepy. 

The guides got down on their knees to pray, 
and I thought it was time to be robbed again. 
I do not know what made me think of making a 



sensation right there in the bowels of that pyra- 
mid, where there were corpses thousands of years 
old, of Egypt's rulers. I never felt that way at 
home, when I visited a cemetery, but I though I 
would shoot my last roman candle and fire my 

307 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

last giant firecracker right there in that mos- 
eleum, and take the chances that we would get 
out alive. So when the tourists were lined up be- 
side a tomb of some Rameses or other, and the 
guides were praying for strength and endurance, 
probably, to get away with all the money we 
had, I picked out a place up toward the roof that 
seemed full of bats and birds of ill omen, and I 
sneaked my roman candle out from under my 
shirt, and touched the fuse to a candle on the 
turban of a guide who was on his knees, and just 
as the first fire ball was ready to come out I 
yelled “Whoop-la-much-a wano, epluribus un- 
um,” and the fire balls lighted up the gloom and 
knocked the bats gaily west. 

Holy jumping cats, but you ought to have seen 
the guides, yelling Allah ! Allah ! and groveling on 
the floor, and the bats were flying around in the 
faces of the tourists, and everybody was simply 
scared out of their boots. I thought I might as 
well wind the thing up glorious, so I touched the 
tail of my last giant firecracker to the sparks that 
were oozing out of my empty roman candle, and 
threw it into the middle of the great room, and 
when it went ofif you would think a cannon had 
exploded, and everybody rushed for the door, and 
308 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


we fell over each other getting out through the 
passage towards the door. 

I was the first to get out on to the side of the 
pyramid, and I watched for the crowd to come 
out. The tourists got out first, and then dad 
came out, puffing and wheezing, and the last to 
come out were the Arabs, and they came on their 
hands and knees, calling to Mr. Allah and every 
one of them actually pale, and I think they were 
conscience-stricken, for they began to give back 
the money they had robbed dad of, and an Arab 
must be pretty scared to give up any of his hard- 
earned robberies. I think dad was about the 
maddest man there was, until he got some of his 
money back, when he felt better, but he gave me 
a talking to that I will never forget. 

He said : “Don’t you know better than to go 
around with explosives, like a train robber, and 
fire them off in a hole in the ground, where there 
is no ventilation, and make people’s ears ring? 
Maybe you have woke up those kings and queens 
in there, and changed a dynasty, you little idiot.” 
The rest of the crowd wanted to throw me down 
the side of the pyramid, but I got away from 
them and went up on top of the pyramid and hoist- 
ed a small American flag, and left it floating 
there, and then came back to where the crowd 


309 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


was discussing the explosion in the tomb, and 
then we all went down the 'side of the pyramid. 

The guides got their nerve back after they got 
out in the air, because they wouldn’t help dad 
down unless he paid them something every stone 
they helped him climb down, so when he got down 
he didn’t have any money, and hardly any pants, 
because what pants the Arabs didn’t tear were 
worn off on the stones, so when he showed up in 
front of the spinks he was a sight, and he bought 
a turban of a guide and unwound it and wound 
it around him in place of pants. I was ashamed 
of dad myself, and it is pretty hard to make me 
ashamed. 

We went back to Cairo on the cars, and what 
do you think, that dead camel that the Arabs 
made dad pay for was with the caravan going- 
back to town, ’cause we saw him out of the car 
window with the hair wore off where dad kicked 
him in the side. The tourists say the Arabs have 
that camel trained to die every day when they get 
to the pyramids, and they make some tenderfoot 
pay for him at the end of each journey. Dad is 
going to try to get his money back from the Egyp- 
tian government, but I guess he will never realize 
on his claim. 

Well, sir, after dad had doctored all night to 
310 



Dad is disguised as a sheik. 


« 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


get the camel rheumatism and spinal meningitis 
out of his system, we took a trip by boat on the 
Nile, and saw the banks where the people grow 
crops by irrigation, and where an English syndi- 
cate has built a big dam, so the whole valley can 
!:c irrigated, and I tell you it will not be long be- 
fore Egypt will raise everything used in the world 
on that desert, and every other country that raises 
food to sell will be busted up in business, but it is 
disgusting to take a trip on the Nile, ’cause all the 
natives are dirty and sick with contagious dis- 
eases, and they are lazy and crippled, and beg for 
a living, and if you don’t give them something 
they steal all you got. You are in luck if you get 
away without having leprosy, or the plague, or 
cholera, or fleas. 

So we went back to Cairo, and there was the 
worst commotion you ever saw, about my fire- 
works in the tomb. The papers said that an 
American dynamiter had attempted to blow up 
the great pyramid, and take possession of the 
country and place it under the American flag, and 
that the conspirators were spotted and would be 
arrested and put in irons as soon as they got 
back from a trip on the Nile. 

Well, sir, dad found his career would close 
right here, and that he would probably spend the 


3 12 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


balance of his life in an Egyptian prison if we 
didn’t get out, so we made a sneak and got into 
our hotel, bought disguises and are going to get 
out of here tonight, and try to get to Gibraltar, or 
somewhere in sight of home. Dad is disguised 
as a shiek, with whiskers and a white robe, like 
a bath robe, and I am going to travel with him 
as an Egyptian girl till we get through the Suez 
canal. 

Gee, but I wouldn’t be a nigger girl only to 
save dad. Your innocent, 

Hennery. 


313 


4 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

The Bad Boy Writes About Gibraltar — The Irish- 
English Army — How He Would Take the Fort- 
ress — Dad Wants to Buy the “Rock.” 

Gibraltar, in Spain and England. 
My Dear Foster Uncle: 

It seems good to get somewhere that you can 
hear the English language spoken by the Irish, 
and the English soldiers are nearly all Irish. 
When you think of the way the British govern- 
ment treats the Irish, and then you look on while 
an orderly sergeant calls the roll of a company, 
and find that nine out of ten answer to Irisn 
names, and only one out of ten has the cockney 
accent, you feel that the Irish ought to rule Eng- 
land, and an O’Rourke or a O’Shaunnessy should 
take the place of King Edward. It makes a boy 
who was brought up in an Irish ward in Ameri- 
ca feel like he was at home to mix with British 
soldiers who come from the old sod. Dad says 
that there is never an army anywhere in the 
world, except the armies of Russia and Japan, 
that the bravest men are not answering to Irish 
names, and always on the advance in a fight, or 


3H 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

in the rear when there is a retreat. Dad says 
that in our own army, when the North and South 
were fighting, the Irish boys were the fellows who 
saved the day. They wanted to fight nights and 
Sundays, and never struck for an eight-hour 
day, or union wages. When the fighting was 
over, and soldiers were sick, or discouraged, and 
despondent, an Irish soldier would come along, 
maybe on crutches, or with a bullet in his inwards, 
and tell funny stories and make the discouraged 
fellows laugh in spite of themselves, and when 
another fight was on, you had to tie the wounded 
Irish soldiers to their cots in the hospital, or put 
them in jail to keep them from forgetting their 
wounds, and going to the front for one more 
fight. Dad says if there was an Irish nation with 
an army and navy, the whole world would have to 
combine to whip them, and yet the nation that has 
the control of the Irish people treats them worse 
than San Francisco treats Chinamen, makes them 
live on potatoes, and allows landlords to take 
away the potatoes if they are shy on the rent. 
Gosh, if I was an Irishman I would see the coun- 
try that walked on my neck in hell before I would 
fight for it. (Gee, dad looked over my shoulder 
and saw what I had written, and he cuffed me on 
the side of the head, and said I was an incendiary 

315 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


and that I ought to have sense enough not to write 
treason while a guest on British soil.) Well. I 
don’t care a darn. It makes me hot under the 
collar when I think of the brave Irish fellows, 
and I wonder why they don’t come to America in 
a body and be aldermen and policemen. When 
I get home I am going to join the Fenians, and 
raise thunder, just as quick as I am old enough. 

Well, sir, we have been through the Suez canal, 
and for a great modern piece of engineering it 
doesn’t size up with a sewer in Milwaukee, or a 
bayou in Louisiana. It is just digging a railroad 
cut through the desert, and letting in the water, 
and there you are. The only question in its con- 
struction was plenty of dredging machines, and 
a place to pile the dirt, and water that just came in 
of its own accord, and stays there, and smells 
like thunder, and you see the natives look at it, 
and keep away from the banks for fear the banks 
will cave in on them, and give them a bath before 
their year is up, cause they don’t bathe but once 
a year, and when they skip a year nobody knows 
about it, except that they smell a year or so more 
frowsy, like butter that has been left out of the 
ice box. Our boat went right along, and got out 
of the canal, because it was a mail boat, but the 
most of the boats we saw were tied up to the 

3 j 6 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


bank, waiting for the millennium. We saw some 
Russian boats waiting for the war to blow over, 
and as we passed them every Russian on board 
looked scared, as though we were Japs that were 
going to fire a torpedo under them, or throw a 
bomb on deck, and when our boat got by the Rus- 



The natives look at it and keep away from the frank. 


sian boat, the crew was called to prayers, to thank 
the Lord, or whoever it is that the Russians thank, 
because they had escaped a dire peril. I guess 
the Russians are all in, and that those who have 
not gone to the front are shaking hands with 
themselves, and waiting for the dove of peace to 
alight on their guns. The Suez canal probably 
pays, and no wonder, cause they charge what 


317 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


they please to boats that go through, and if they 
don't pay all they have to do is to stay out, and go 
around a few thousand miles. It is like a ferry 
across a little stream out west, where there is no 
other way to cross, except to wade or go around, 
and the old ferryman sizes up the wagon load that 
wants to cross, and takes all they have got loose, 
and then the travelers are ahead of the game, 
cause if they didn't cross the stream they would 
have to camp on the bank until the stream dried 
up. Some day an earthquake will split that des- 
ert wide open and the water in the Suez canal 
will soak into the sand and the steamboats will 
lay in the mud, and be covered with a sand storm, 
and future ages will be discovering full rigged 
ships down deep on the desert. Dad says we bet- 
ter sell our stock in the canal and buy air ship 
stock. And talk about business, there is more 
tonnage goes through the Soo canal, between 
Michigan and Canada than goes through the Suez 
and we don’t howl about it very much. 

Well, sir, I have studied Gibraltar in my geog- 
raphy, and read about it in the papers, and seen 
its pictures in advertisements, but never real- 
ized what a big thing it was. Now, who ever 
thought of putting that enormous rock right there 
on that prairie, but God. I suppose the English, 

318 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


when they saw that rock, thought the good Lord 
had put it there for the English to drill holes in, 
for guns, and when the Lord was busy some- 
where else, the English smoughed the rock away 
from Spain, by playing a game with loaded dice, 
and when England got it, that country decided 
to arm it like a train robber, and hold up the 
other nations of the earth. When a vessel passes 
that rock it has to hold up its hands and salute 
the British flag, or get a mess of hardware fired 
into its vital parts, but that is all it amounts to, 
cause it couldn’t win any battle for England, 
and could only sink trading vessels. The walls 
of the rock are perforated from top to bottom, 
with holes big enough for guns to squirt smoke 
and shells, but if the enemy should stay away 
from right in front of the holes, they might shoot 
till doomsday and never hit anything but fishing 
smacks and peddlers of oranges. Gibraltar is like 
a white elephant in a zoological garden. It just 
eats and keeps off the flies with its short tail, and 
visitors feed it peanuts and wonder what it was 
made for, and how much hay it eats. Gibraltar is 
like a twenty-dollar gold piece that a man carries 
in his watch pocket for an emergency, which he 
never intends to spend until he gets in the tightest 
place of his life, and it wears out one pocket after 


319 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


another, and some day drops through on to the 
sidewalk, and a tramp finds it and goes on a bat 
and gets the worth of his money, and has a good 
time, if he saves enough to buy a bromo seltzer 
the next morning after. It is like the Russian 
war chest, that is never to be opened as long as 
they can borrow money. If Gibraltar could be put 
on castors, and rolled around from one country 
to another, England could whip all Europe and 
Asia. It would be a Tro Jane horse on a larger 
scale, and be a terror ; but, say, if it got to Amer- 
ica we wouldn’t do a thing to it. We would run 
a standpipe up the side, and connect it with an 
oil pipe line, fill Gibraltar’s tunnels and avenues, 
and magazines and barracks with crude oil, and 
touch a match to it, and not an Englishman would 
live to tell about it. Gee, but I would be sorry 
for the Irish soldiers, but I guess they wouldn’t 
be there, cause they wouldn’t fight America. 
Well, if England ever has a big war, and she gets 
chesty about Gibraltar, and says it is impregnable, 
and defies the world to take it, I bet you ten 
dollars it could be taken in twenty-four hours. 
If I was a general, or an admiral, I would have 
about forty tank steamers, loaded with kerosene, 
and have them land, innocent like, right up be- 
side Gibraltar, ostensibly to sell oil for perfum- 


3 20 


“Dad got up on his hind legs and sang so loud you would think 
he would split Jiisself.” 



PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


ery to the natives, who would all be improved by 
using kerosene on their persons. Then I would 
get on a barrel, on deck of my flag ship, and com- 
mand the English general to surrender uncondi- 
tionally, and if he refused I would set a slow 
match on every oil vessel, and have the crews 
get in skiffs and pull for the opposite shore, and 
when the oil got on fire, and rolled up all over 
Gibraltar, and burned every living thing, I would 
throw water from a fire department boat on the 
rock, and she would split open and roll all over 
the prairie, and then I would bury the cremated 
dead out on the desert, and seek other worlds to 
conquer, like Alexander the Great. But don’t be 
afraid. I won’t do it unless they make me mad, 
but you watch my smoke if they pick on your little 
Hennery too much, when he grows up. 

But I haven’t got any kick coming about Gib- 
raltar, cause they treated dad and I all right, 
and the commander detailed an ensign to show 
us all through the fortress. Now don’t get an 
ensign mixed up with a unique, such as showed 
us through the Turkish harem. An English en- 
sign is just as different from a Turkish unique 
as you can imagine. Every man to his place. 
You couldn’t teach a Turkish unique how to show 
visitors around an English fortress, and an Eng- 


322 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


lish ensign in a Turkish harem would bring on 
a world’s war, they are so different. Well, we 
went through tunnels in the rock, and up and 
down elevators, and all was light as day from 
electric lights, and we saw ammunition enough 
to sink all the ships in the world, if it could be 
exploded in the right place, and they have provi- 
sions enough stored in the holes in the rock to 
keep an army for forty years if they didn’t get 
ptomaine poisoned from eating canned stuff. It 
was all a revelation to dad, and when we got all 
through, and got out into the sunlight, we 
breathed free, and when dad got his second wind 
he broke up the English officers by taking out a 
pencil and piece of paper, and asked them what 
they would take for the rock and its contents, and 
move out, and let the American flag float over it. 
Well, say, they were hot, and they told dad to 
go plum to ’ell, but dad wouldn’t do it. He said 
America didn’t want the old stone quarry, any- 
way, and if it did it could come and take it. 
I guess they would have had dad arrested for 
treason, only when we got out into the town 
there was the whole British Atlantic squadron 
lined up, with the men up in the rigging like mon- 
keys, and every vessel was firing a salute, as a 
yacht came steaming by. Dad thought war had 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


surely broke out, or that some rich American 
owned the yacht, but it turned out to be Queen 
Alexandria and a party of tourists, and when 
the band played “God Save the Queen,” dad got 
up on his hind legs and sang so loud you would 
think he would split hisself, and a fellow went 
up and threw his arms around dad, and began to 
weep, and the tears came in dad’s eyes, and an- 
other fellow pinched dad’s watch, and the cele- 
bration closed with everybody getting drunk, and 
the queen sailed away. Say, we are going to 
Spain, on the next £>oat, and you watch the pa- 
pers. W e will probably be hung for taking Cuba 
and the Phillipines. 

Yours, Hennery. 


3^4 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

The Bad Boy Writes of Spain — They Call on the King 
And the Bad Boy is at it Once More — They See a 
Bull Fight and Dad Does a Turn. 

Madrid, Spain. — My Dear Uncle: You prob- 
ably think we are taking our lives in our hands by 
coming to Spain, so soon after the Cuban war, in 
which President Roosevelt charged up San Juan 
Hill, in the face of over thirty bloodthirsty Span- 
iards, and captured the blockhouse on the sum- 
mit of the hill, which was about as big as a 
switchman’s shanty, and wouldn’t hold two 
platoons of infantry, of twelve men to the pla- 
toon, without crowding, and which closed the 
war, after the navy had everlastingly paralyzed 
the Spanish vessels, and sunk them in wet water, 
and picked up the crews and run them through 
clothes-wringers to dry them out; but we are as 
safe here as we would be on South Clark street, 
in Chicago. Do you know, when I read of that 
charge of our troops up San Juan hill, headed 
by our peerless bear-hunter, I thought it was 
like the battle of Gettysburg, where hundreds of 

325 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

thousands of men fought on each side, and I 
classed Roosevelt with Grant, Sheridan, Sher- 
man, Meade and Thomas, and all that crowd, but 
one day I got talking with a veteran of the Span- 
ish-American war, who promptly deserted after 
every pay day, and re-enlisted after he had spent 
his money, and he didn't do a thing to my ideas of 
the importance of that battle. He told me it was 
only a little skirmish, like driving in a picket post, 
and that there were not Spaniards enough there 
to have a roll call, not so many Spanish soldiers 
as there were American newspaper correspond- 
ents on our side, that only a few were killed and 
wounded, and that a dozen soldiers in an army 
wagon could have driven up San Juan hill with 
firecrackers and scared the Spaniards out of the 
country, and that a part of a negro regiment did 
pretty near all the shooting, while our officers did 
the yelling, and had their pictures taken, caught 
in the act. So I have quit talking of the heroism 
of our army in Cuba, because it makes everybody 
laugh and they speak of Shafter and Roosevelt, 
and hunch up their shoulders, and say, “ bah," 
but when you talk about the navy, and Schley, 
and Sampson, and Clark, and Bob Evans, they 
take off their hats and their faces are full of ad- 
miration, and they say, “ magnificent," and ask 

326 



PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

you to take a drink. Gee, but dad got his foot in 
it by talking about the blowing up of the Maine, 
and looking saucy, as though he was going to get 
even with the Spaniards, but he found that every 
Spaniard was as sorry for that accident as we 
were, and they would take off their hats when 
the Maine was mentioned, and look pained and 
heart-sick. I tell you the Spaniards are about as 
good people as you will find anywhere, and dad 
has concluded to fall back on Christopher Colum- 
bus for a steady diet of talk, cause if it had not 
been for Chris we wouldn’t have been discovered 
to this day, which might have been a darn good 
thing for us. But the people here do not recall 
the fact that there ever was a man named Chris- 
topher Columbus, and they don’t know what he 
ever discovered, or where the country is that he 
sailed away to find, unless they are educated, and 
familiar with ancient history, and only once in 
a while will you find anybody that is educated. 
The children of America know more about the 
history of Spain than the Spanish children. This 
country reminds you of a play on the stage, the 
grandees in their picturesque costumes, though 
few in number, compared to the population, are 
the whole thing, and the people you see on the 
stage with the grandees, in peasant costume, 

328 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


peddling oranges and figs, you find here in the 
life of Spain, looking up to the grandees as 
though they were gods. Every peasant carries 
a knife in some place, concealed about him, and 
no two carry their toad stabbers in the same 
place. If you see a man reach his finger under 
his collar to scratch his neck, the chances are his 
fingers touch the handle of his dagger, and if he 
hitches up his pants, his dagger is there, and if 
he pulls up his trousers leg to scratch for a flea, 
you can bet your life his knife is right handy, and 
if you have any trouble you don’t know where 
the knife is coming from, as you do about an 
American revolver, when one of our citizens 
reaches for his pistol pocket. Spaniards are 
nervous people, on the move all the time, and it 
is on account of fleas. Every man, woman and 
child contains more than a million fleas, and as 
they can’t scratch all the time, they keep on the 
move, hoping the fleas will jump off on somebody 
else. When we came here we were flealess, but 
every person we have come near to seems to have 
contributed some fleas to us, until now we are 
loaded down with them, and we find in our room 
at the hotel a box of insect powder, which is 
charged in with the candles. The king, who is a 
boy about three years older than I am, is full of 


329 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


fleas, too, and he jumps around from one place 
to another, like he was shaking himself to get 
rid of them. He gets up in the morning and goes 
out horseback riding, and jumps fences and rides 
up and down the marble steps of the public build- 
ings, as though he wanted to make the fleas feel 
in danger, so they will leave him. Seems to me 
if every man kept as many dogs as they do in 
Constantinople, the fleas would take to the dogs, 
but they say here that fleas will leave a dog to 
get on a human being, because they like the smell 
of garlic, as every Spaniard eats garlic a dozen 
times a day. They are trying to teach dogs to 
eat garlic, but no self-respecting dog will touch 
it. We have had to fill up on garlic in order to 
be able to talk with the people, cause dad got sea 
sick the first day here, everybody smelled so 
oniony. Dad wanted a druggist to put up onions 
in capsules, like they do quinine, so he could take 
onions and not taste them, but he couldn't make 
the man understand. There ought to be a law 
against any person eating onions, unless he is 
under a death sentence. But you can stand a 
man with the onion habit, after you get used to it. 
It is a woman, a beautiful woman, one you would 
like to have take you on your lap and pet you, that 
ought to know better than to eat onions. Gee, 



PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


but when you see a woman that is so beautiful it 
makes her ache to carry her beauty around, and 
you get near to her and expect to breathe the 
odor of roses and violets, that makes you tired 
when she opens her mouth to say soft words of 
love, and there comes to your nostrils the odor of 
onions. Do you know, nothing would make me 
commit suicide so quick as to have a wife who 
habitually loaded herself with onions. Dad was 
buying some candy for me at a confectioner shop, 
of a beautiful Spanish woman, and when he asked 
how much it was, she bent over towards him in 
the most bewitching manner and breathed in his 
face and said, “ Quatro-realis, seignor,” which 
meant “ four bits, mister,” and he handed her a 
five-dollar gold piece, and went outdoors for a 
breath of fresh air, and let her keep the change. 
He said she was welcome to the four dollars and 
fifty cents if she would not breathe towards him 
again. 

Well, we have taken in the town, looked at the 
cathedrals, attended the sessions of the cortez, 
and the gambling houses, saw the people sell the 
staple products of the country, which are prunes, 
tomatoes and wine. The people do not care what 
happens as long as they have a quart of wine. In 
some countries the question of existence is bread, 


332 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


but in Spain it is wine. No one is so poor they 
cannot have poor wine, and with wine nothing 
else is necessary, but a piece of cheese and bread 
helps the wine some, though either could be dis- 
pensed with. In some countries “ wine, women 
and song ” are all that is necessary to live. Here 
it is wine, cheese and an onion. We went to see 
the king, because he is such a young boy, and 
dad thought it would encourage the ruler to see 
an American statesman, and to mingle with an 
American boy who could give him cards and 
spades, and little casino, and beat him at any 
game. I made dad put on a lot of badges we had 
collected in our town when there were conven- 
tions held there, and when they were all pinned 
on dad’s breast he looked like an admiral. There 
was a badge of Modern Woodmen, one of the 
Hardware Dealers’ Association, one of the 
Wholesale Druggists, one of the Amalgamated 
Association of Railway Trainmen, one of the 
Farmers’ Alliance, one of the Butter and Cheese- 
men’s Convention, one of the State Undertakers’ 
Guild, and half a dozen others in brass, bronze 
and tin, on various colored ribbons. Say, do you 
know, when they ushered us into the throne room 
at the palace, and the little king, who looked like 
a student in the high school, with dyspepsia from 


333 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


overstudy and cake between meals, saw dad, he 
thought he was the most distinguished American 
he had ever seen, and he invited dad up beside 
him on the throne, and dad sat in the chair that 
the queen will sit in when the boy king gets mar- 
ried, and I sat down on a front seat and watched 
dad. Dad had read in the papers that the boy 
king wanted to marry an American girl who was 
the possessor of a lot of money, so dad began to 
tell the king of girls in America that were more 
beautiful than any in the world, and had hun- 
dreds of millions of cold dollars, and an appetite 
for raw kings, and that he could arrange a match 
for the king that would make him richer than 
any king on any throne. The boy king was be- 
coming interested, and I guess dad would have 
had him married off all right, if the king had not 
seen me take out a bag of candy and begin to eat, 
when he said to me, “ Come up here, Bub, and 
give me some of that.” Gosh, but I trembled like 
a leaf, but I went right up the steps of the throne 
and handed him the bag, and said, “Help your- 
self, Bub.” Well, sir, the queerest thing hap- 
pened. I had bought two pieces of candy filled 
with cayenne pepper, for April fool, and the king 
handed the bag to the master of ceremonies, a big 
Spaniard all covered over with gold lace, and if 


334 


-TAYlor 



PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


you will believe me the king got one piece of the 
cayenne pepper candy, and that spangled prime 
minister got the other, and the king chewed his 
piece first, and he opened his mouth like a dog 
that has picked up a hot boiled egg and he blew 
out his breath to cool his tongue and said, 
“ Whoosh/’ and strangled, and sputtered, and 
then the prime minister he got his, and he yelled 
murder in Spanish, and the king called for water, 
and put his hands on his stomach and had a 
cramp, and the other man he tied himself up in 
a double bowknot, and called for a priest, and the 
king said he would have to go to the chapel, and 
the fellows who were guarding the king took him 
away, breathing hard, and red in the face, and 
dad said to me, “ What the bloody hell you trying 
to do with the crowned heads? Cause you have 
poisoned the whole bunch, and we better get 
out.” So we went out of the palace while the 
king’s retainers were filling him with ice water. 
Well, they got the cayenne pepper out of him, 
because we saw him at the bull fight in the after- 
noon, but for a while he had the hottest box there 
ever was outside of a freight train, and if he 
lives to be as old as Mr. Methuselah he will 
always remember his interview with little Hen- 
nery. The bull fights ain’t much. Bulls come 

336 





-T/vao*- 


“Tossed, him over the fence.” 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

in the ring mad as wet hens, cause they stick 
daggers in them, and they bellow around, and 
the Spaniards dodge and shake red rags at them, 
and after a bull has ripped a mess of bowels out 
of a few horses, then a man with a saber stabs the 
bull between the shoulders, and he drops dead, 
and the crowd cheers the assassin of the bull, and 
they bring in another bull. Well, sir, dad came 
mighty near his finish at the bull fight. When 
the second bull came in, and ripped the stomach 
out of a blind horse, and the bull was just charg- 
ing the man who was to stab it, dad couldn't stand 
it any longer and he climbed right over into the 
ring, and he said : “ Look a here, you heathen ; 
I protest, in the name of the American Humane 
Society, against this cruelty to animals, and un- 
less this business stops right here I will have this 

place pulled, and ” Well, sir, you would of 

thought that bull would have had sense enough 
to see that dad was his friend, but he probably 
couldn't understand what dad was driving at, 
for he made a rush for dad, and dad started to 
run for the fence, and the bull caught dad just 
like dad was sitting in a rocking chair, and 
tossed him over the fence, and dad’s pants stayed 
on the bull’s horns, and dad landed in amongst 
a lot of male and female grandees, and everybody 

338 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


yelled, “ Bravo, Americano/’ and the police 
wrapped a blanket around dad’s legs and were 
going to take him to the emergency hospital, but 
I claimed dad, and took him to the hotel. Dad is 
ready to come home now. He says he is through. 

Yours, Hennery. 


339 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad at Berlin — They Call on 
Emperor William and his Family and the Bad 
Boy Plays a Joke on Them All. 

Berlin, Germany. — My Dear Old Pummer- 
nickel: Now we have got pretty near home, and 
you would enjoy it to be with us, because you 
couldn’t tell the town from Milwaukee, except 
for the military precision with which everything 
is conducted, where you never take a glass- of beer 
without cracking your heels together like a sol- 
dier, and giving a military salute to the bar- 
tender, who is the commander-in-chief of all who 
happen to patronize his bar. Everybody here 
acts like he was at a picnic in the woods, with a 
large barrel of beer, with perspiration oozing 
down the outside, and a spigot of the largest size, 
which fills a schooner at one turn of the wrist, 
and every man either smiles or laughs out loud, 
and you feel as though there was happiness every- 
where, and that heaven was right here in this 
greatest German city. There is laughter every- 
where, except when the Emperor drives by, es- 

340 




“Every man smiles or laughs out loud.” 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


corted by his bodyguard, on the finest horses in 
the world; then every citizen on the street stops 
smiling and laughing ; all stand at attention, and 
every face takes on a solemn, patriotic, almost a 
fighting look, as though each man would consider 
it his happiest duty and pleasure to walk right 
up to the mouth of cannon and die in his tracks 
for his pale-faced, haggard and loved Emperor. 
And the Emperor never smiles on his subjects as 
he passes, but looks into every eye on both sides 
of the beautiful street, with an expression of 
agony on his face, but a proud light in his eye, as 
though he would say, “ Ach, Gott, but they are 
daisies, and they would fight for the Fatherland 
with the last breath in their bodies/' 

The pride of the people in that moustached 
young man, with the look of sufifering, is only 
equalled by the pride of the Emperor in every 
German in Germany, or anywhere on the face of 
the globe. There is none of the “ Hello, Bill ! ” 
such as we have in America, when the President 
drives through his people, many of whom yell, 
“ Hello, Teddy! ” while he shows his teeth, and 
laughs, and stands up in his carriage, and says, 
“ Hello, Mike," as he recognizes an acquaintance. 
But these same “ Hello, Bill," Americans are 
probably just as loyal to their chief, whoever he 


342 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

may be, and would fight as hard as the loving 
Germans would for their hereditary Emperor. 

I suppose there is somebody working in Berlin, 
but it seems to us that the whole population, so 
far as can be seen, is bent on enjoying every min- 
ute, walking the streets, in good clothes, giving 
military salutes, and drinking beer between 
meals, and talking about what Germany would 
do to an enemy if the ever-present chip on the 
shoulder should be knocked ofif, even accidentally. 
But they all seem to love America, and when we 
registered at the hotel, from Milwaukee, Wis., 
U. S. A., citizens began to gather around us and 
ask about relatives at our home. They seem to 
think that every German who has settled in Mil- 
waukee owns a brewery, and that all are rich, and 
that some day they will come back to Germany 
and spend the money, and fight for the Em- 
peror. 

We did not have the heart to tell them that all 
the Germans in Milwaukee were going to stay 
there and spend their money, and while their 
hearts were still warm towards the Fatherland, 
they loved the Stars and Stripes, and would fight 
for the American flag, against the world, and that 
the younger Germans spoke the German lan- 
guage, if it all, with a Yankee accent. Gee, but 

343 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


wouldn't the people of Berlin be hot under the 
collar if they knew how many Germans in Amer- 
ica were unfamiliar with the make-up of the Ger- 
man flag, and that they only see it occasionally 
when some celebration of German days takes 
place. 

Well, when dad saw the German Emperor 
drive down the great street, and got a look at 
his face, he said, “ Hennery, I have got to see 
that young man and advise him to go and con- 
sult a doctor," and so we made arrangements to 
go to the Palace and see the Emperor and his 
son, the Crown Prince, who will before long take 
the empire on his shoulders, if William is as sick 
as he looks. You don't have to hire any mas- 
querade clothes to call on the Emperor of Ger- 
many, like you do when you visit royalty in 
Turkey and Egypt, for a good frock coat and a 
silk hat will take you anywhere in the day time, 
and a swallowtail is legal tender at night ; so dad 
put on his frock coat and silk hat, just as he 
would to go and attend an afternoon wedding at 
home, and we were ushered in to a regular par- 
lor, where the Emperor was having fun with his 
children, and the Empress was doing some needle- 
work. 

Dad supposed we would have to talk to the 


344 



TKUOR- 


So this is the Champion Little Devil of America." 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

Emperor and the Prince through an interpreter, 
and we stood there waiting for some one to break 
the ice, when some one told the Emperor that an 
x\merican gentleman and his boy wanted to pay 
their respects, and the Emperor, who wore an 
ordinary dark suit, with no military frills, took 
one of the young Princes he had been playing 
with across his knee and gave him a couple of 
easy spanks, in fun, and the whole family was 
laughing, and the spanked boy “ tackled " the 
Emperor around the legs, below the knee, like a 
football player, and the other Princes pulled him 
off, and the Emperor came up to dad, smiling as 
though he was having the time of his life, and 
spoke to dad in the purest English, and said he 
was glad to see the “ Bad Boy " man, because he 
had read all about the pranks of the Bad Boy, 
and bid dad welcome to Germany, and he didn't 
look sick at all. 

Dad was taken all of a heap, and didn't know 
what to make of the German Emperor talking 
English, but when the ruler of Germany turned 
to me and said, “ And so this is the champion 
little devil of America," and patted me on the 
head, dad felt that he had struck a friend of the 
family, and he sat down with the Emperor and 
talked for half an hour, while the young Princes 

346 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

gathered around me, and we sat down on the 
floor and the boys got out their knives, and we 
played mumbletypeg on the carpet, just as though 
we were at home, and all the boys talked English, 
and we had a bully time. The princes had all 
read “ Peck’s Bad Boy” and I think the Em- 
peror and Empress have encouraged them in 
their wickedness, for the boys told me of several 
tricks they had played on their father, the Em- 
peror, which they had copied from the Bad Boy, 
and it made me blush when they told of initiating 
their father into the Masons, the way my chum 
and I initiated dad into the Masons with the aid 
of a goat. 

I asked the boys how their dad took it, and told 
them from what we in America heard about the 
Emperor of Germany, we would think he would 
kill anybody that played a trick on him ; but they 
said he would stand anything from the children, 
and enjoy it ; but if grown men attempted to mon- 
key with him, the fur would fly. The Crown 
Prince came in and was introduced to me, and he 
seemed proud to see me, cause his uncle, Prince 
Henry, had told him about being in Milwaukee, 
and how all the women in that town were the 
handsomest he had ever seen in his trip around 
the world, and he asked me if it was so. I re- 


347 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


f erred him to dad, and dad told him the women 
were the greatest in the world, and then dad 
made his usual break. He said : “ Look ahere, 

Mister Prince, you have got to be married some 
day, and raise a 'family to hand the German em- 
pire down to, and my advice to you is not to let 
them saw off on to you no duchess or princess as 
homely as a hedge fence, with no ginger in her 
blood, but you skip out to America, and come to 
Milwaukee, and I will introduce you to girls that 
are so handsome they will make you toe the mark, 
and if you marry one of them she will raise a 
family of healthy young royalty with no humor 
in the blood, and you won’t have to go off and be 
gay away from home, cause an American wife 
will take you by the ear if you show any signs of 
wandering from your own fireside, like lots of 
your relatives have done.” 

Gee, but that made the Emperor hot, and he 
said dad needn’t instill any of his American ideas 
into the German nobility, as he could run things 
all right without any help, and dad got ready to 
go, cause the atmosphere was getting sort of 
chilly, but the Emperor soon got over his huff, 
and told dad not to hurry, and then he turned to 
me and said, “ Now, little American Bad Boy, 
what kind of a trick are you going to play on me, 

348 



'Dad and Emperor William stood scratching themselves. 



PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


cause from what I have read of you I know you 
will never go out of this house without giving me 
a benefit, and all my boys expect it, and will enjoy 
it, the same as I will; now, let *er go.” 

I felt that it was up to me to do something to 
maintain the reputation I had made, so I said, 
“ Your majesty, I will now proceed to make it 
interesting for you, if you and the boys will 
kindly be seated in a circle around me.” They 
got into a circle, all laughing, and I took out of 
my pistol pocket a half pint flask, of glass, cov- 
ered with leather, and with a stopper that opened 
by touching a spring, and I walked around in 
front of each one of the Royal family, mumbling, 
“ Ene-mene-mony-my,” and opening the flask in 
front of each one, and pretty soon they all began 
to get nervous, and scratch themselves, and the 
Emperor slapped his leg, and pinched his arm, and 
put his fingers down his collar and scratched his 
neck, and the Crown Prince jumped up and 
kicked his leg, and scratched his back, and said, 
“ Say, kid, you are not hypnotizing us, are you ?” 
and I said, “ Ene-meny-mony-my,” and kept on 
touching the stopper. 

By and by they all got to scratching, and the 
Emperor turned sort of pale, but he was going 
to see the show through to the end, as long as he 

350 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

had a ticket, and he said, “ What is the joke, any- 
way ?” and I kept on saying, “ Ene-mene-mony- 
my,” and walking around in front of them, and 
dad began to dance around, too, and dig under 
his shirt bosom, and scratch his leg, and then 
they all scratched in unison, and laughed, and a 
little prince asked how long before they would 
know what it was all about, and I said my ene- 
mene, and looked solemn, and dad said, “ What 
you giving us?” and I said, “ Never you mind; 
this is my show, and I am the whole push,” and 
everybody had raised up out of his chair and each 
was scratching for all that was out, and finally the 
Emperor said, “ I like a joke as well as anybody, 
but I can’t laugh until I know what I am laugh- 
ing about,” and he told dad to make me show 
what was in the bottle, and I showed the bottle 
and there was nothing in it, and there they stood 
scratching themselves, and I told dad we better 
excuse ourselves and go, and we were going all 
right enough when dad said, “ What is it you are 
doing?” and as we got almost to the door I said, 
“ Your majesty, I have distributed, impartially, 
I trust, in the Royal family of Germany, a half a 
pint of the hungriest fleas that Egypt can pro- 
duce, for they have been in that flask three weeks, 
with nothing to eat except themselves, and I esti- 

35 1 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


mate that there were a million Cairo fleas in the 
flask, enough to set up housekeeping in your pal- 
ace, with enough to stock the palace of your 
Crown Prince when he is married, and this is that 



“Dad leaned against a lamppost and scratched his back.” 

you may remember the visit of Peck’s Bad Boy 
and his Dad.” 

The Emperor was mad at first, but he laughed, 
and when we got out of the palace dad leaned 
against a lamp post and scratched his back, and 
said to me, “ Hennery, you never ought to have 

352 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


did it,” and I said, “ What could a poor boy do 
when called upon suddenly to do something to 
entertain royalty?” 

“ Well,” says dad, “ I don't care for myself, 
but this thing is apt to bring on international 
complications,” and I said, “ Yes, it will bring 
Persia into it, cause they will have to use Persian 
insect powder to get rid of them,” and then we 
went to our hotel and fought fleas all night, and 
thought of the sleepless night the royal family 
were having. 

Well, so long, old Pummernickel. 

Your only, Hennery. 


353 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

The Bad Boy Writes from Brussels — He and Dad see 
the Field of Waterloo and call on King Leopold 
and Dad and the King go in for a Swim — The Bad 
Boy, a Dog and some Goats do the rest. 

Brussels, Belgium. — Dear Old Skate : “What 
is the matter with our going to Belgium?” said 
dad to me, as we were escaping from Germany. 
“Well, what in thunder do we want to go to Bel- 
gium for? ” said I to dad. “ I do not want to go 
to a country that has no visible means of support, 
except raising Belgian hares, to sell to cranks in 
America. I couldn’t eat rabbits without think- 
ing I was chewing a piece of house cat, and rab- 
bits is the chief food of the people. I have eaten 
horse and mule in Paris, and wormy figs in 
Turkey, and embalmed beef fried in candle 
grease in Russia, and sausage in Germany, im- 
ported from the Leutgart sausage factory in 
Chicago, where the man run his wife through a 
sausage machine; and stuff in Egypt, with 
ground mummy for curry powder, but I draw 
the line on Belgian hares, and I strike right here, 

354 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

and shall have the International Union of Amal- 
gamated Tourists declare a boycott on Belgium, 
by gosh/’ said I, just like that, bristling up to 
dad real spunky. 

“ You are going to Belgium all right,” said 
dad, as he took hold of my thumb in a Jiu Jitsu 
fashion, and twisted it backwards until I fairly 
penuked, and held it, while he said he should never 
dare go home without visiting King Leopold’s 
kingdom, and had a talk with an eighty-year-old 
male flirt, who had a thousand chorus girls on his 
staff, and could give the Sultan of Turkey cards 
and spades and little casino in the harem game. 
“You will go along, won’t you, bub?” and he gave 
my thumb another twist, and I said, “ You bet 
your life, but I won’t do a thing to you and Leo- 
pold before we get out of the Belgian hare belt,” 
and so here we are, looking for trouble. 

It is strange we never hear more about Bel- 
gium in America, but actually I never heard of a 
Belgian settling in the United States. There 
are Irish, and Germans, and Norwegians, and 
Italians, and men of all other countries, but I 
never saw a Belgian until to-day, and it does you 
good to see a people who don’t do anything but 
work. There is not a loafer in Belgium, and 
every man has smut on his nose, and his hands 

355 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

are black with handling iron, or something. 
There is no law against people going away from 
Belgium, but they all like it here, and seem to 
think there is no other country, and they are 
happy, and work from choice. 



I always knew the Belgian guns that sell in 
America for twelve shillings, and kill at both 
ends, but I never knew they made things here 
that were worth anything, but dad says they are 
better fixed here for making everything used by 
civilized people than any country on earth, and 

356 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

I am glad to be here, cause you get notice when 
you are going to be robbed. They ring a bell 
here every minute to give you notice that some 
one is after the coin, so when you hear a bell 
ring, if you hang onto your pocketbook, you 
don’t lose. 

This is the place where “ There was a sound 
of revelry at night, and Belgium’s capitol had 
gathered there.” You remember, the night be- 
fore the Battle of Waterloo, when Napoleon 
Bonaparte got his. You musi; remember about 
it, old man, just when they were right in the 
midst of the dance, and “ soft eyes looked love 
to eyes which spake again,” and they were taking 
a champagne bath, inside and out, when sudden- 
ly the opening guns of Waterloo, twelve miles 
away, began to boom, and the poet, who was 
present, said, “ But hush, hark, a deep sound like 
a rising knell,” and everybody turned pale and be- 
gan to stampede, when the floor manager said, 
“ ’Tis but the wind, or the car on the stony street, 
on with the dance, let joy be unconfined, no sleep 
till morn, when youth and pleasure meet, to 
chase the glowing hours with flying feet.” 

Well, sir, this is the place where that ball took 
place, which is described in the piece I used to 
speak in school, but I never thought I would be 

357 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

here, right where the dancers got it in the neck. 
When dad found that the battlefield of Waterloo 
was only a few miles away, he hired a wagon 
and we went out there. Well, sir, of all the 
frauds we have run across on this trip the bat- 
tlefield of Waterloo is the worst. When the 
farmers who are raising barley and baled hay on 
the battlefield, saw us coming, they dropped their 
work and made a rush for us, and one fellow 
yelled something in the Belgian language that 
sounded like, “ I saw them first,” and he got hold 
of dad and me, and the rest stood off like a lot of 
hack drivers that have seen a customer fall into 
the hands of another driver, and made up faces 
at us, and called the farmer who had caught us 
the vilest names. They said we would be skinned 
to a finish by the faker who got us, and they were 
right. 

He showed us from a high hill, where the dif- 
ferent portions of the battle were fought, and 
where they caught Napoleon Bonaparte, and 
where Blucher came up and made things hum in 
the German language, and then he took us off to 
his farm where the most of the relics were found, 
and began to sell things to dad, until he had filled 
the hind end of the wagon with bullets and grape- 
shot, sabres and bayonets, old rusty rifles, and 

358 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


everything dad wanted, and we had enough to 
fill a museum, and when the farmer had got dad’s 
money we went back to Brussels, and got our 
stuff unloaded at the hotel. Say, when we came 
to look it over we found two rusty Colt’s revol- 
vers, and guns of modern construction, which 
have been bought on battlefields in all countries, 
and properly rusted to sell to tourists. I showed 
dad that the revolver was unknown at the time 
of the battle of Waterloo, and that every article 
he had bought was a fraud, the sabers having 
been made in America, before the war of the re- 
bellion, and dad was mad, and gave the stuff to 
the porter of the hotel, who charged dad seven 
dollars for taking it away. 

Dad kept one three-cornered hat that the 
farmer told him Bonaparte lost when his horse 
stampeded with him, and it drifted under a 
barbed wire fence, where it had lain until the day 
before we visited the battlefield. Say, that hat 
is as good as new, and dad says it is worth all the 
stuff cost, but I would not be found dead wearing 
it, cause it is all out of style. 

We have seen the King of Belgium, and actu- 
ally got the worth of our money. He is an old 
dandy, and looks like a Philadelphia Quaker, only 
he is not as pious as a Quaker. Dad wrote to the 

359 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


King and said he was a distinguished American, 
traveling for his health, and had a niece who had 
frequently visited Belgium with an opera com- 
pany, and she had spoken of the King, and dad 
wanted to talk over matters that might be of in- 



" The King began to peel off his clothes and Dad took off his” 

terest both to Belgium and to America. 'Well, 
the messenger came back and said dad couldn’t 
get to the palace a minute too quick, and so we 
went over, and as we were going through the 
park we saw an old man, in citizen’s clothes, sit- 
ting on a bench, patting the head of a boar 


360 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

hound, and when he saw us he said, “ Come here, 
Uncle Sam, and let my dog chew your pants.” 

Dad thought it must be some lunatic, and was 
going to make a sneak, and get out, when the 
man rose up and we saw it was the King, and 
we went up to him and sat down on the bench, 
and he asked dad if he had come as the relative 
of the opera singer, to commence suit against the 
King for breach of promise, or to settle for a 
money consideration, remarking that he had al- 
ways rather pay cash than to have any fuss made 
about these little matters. Dad told him he had 
no claim against him for alienating anybody's 
affections, or for breach of promise, and that all 
he wanted was to have a little talk with the King, 
and find out how a King lived, and how he had 
any fun in running the king business, at his age, 
and they sat down and began to talk as friendly 
as two old chums, while the dog played tag with 
me. We found that the King was a regular boy, 
and that instead of his mind being occupied by 
affairs of state, or his African concessions in the 
Congo country, where he owns a few million 
slaves who steal ivory for him, and murder other 
tribes, he was enjoying life just as he did when 
he was a barefooted boy, fishing for perch at the 
old mill pond, and when he mentioned his career 

361 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


as a boy, and his enjoyments, dad told about his 
youth, and how he never got so much pleasure 
in after life as he did when he had a stone bruise 
on his heel, and went off into the woods and cut 
a tamarack pole and caught sunfish till the cows 
came home. 

The King brightened up and told dad he had a 
pond in the palace grounds, stocked with old- 
fashioned fish, and every day he took off his 
shoes and rolled up his pants, and with nothing 
on but a shirt and pants held up by one suspen- 
der of striped bed ticking, he went out in a boat 
and fished as he did when a boy, with a bent pin 
for a hook, and he was never so happy as when 
so engaged, and they could all have their grand 
functions, and balls, and dinners, and Turkish 
baths, if they wanted them, but give him the old 
swimming hole. “ Me, too,” said dad, and as 
dad looked down into the park he saw a little 
lake, and dad held up two fingers, just as boys do 
when they mean to say, /'Come on, let’s go in 
swimming,” and the King said, “ I’ll go you,” 
and they locked arms and started through the 
woods to the little lake, and the dog and I fol- 
lowed. 

Well, sir, you’d a dide to see dad and Leopold 
make a rush for that swimming place. The King 

362 



“I’ll swim you a match to the other side,” said the King. 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

put his hand in the water, and said it was fine, 
and began to peel his clothes off, and dad took off 
his clothes and the King made a jump and went 
in all over, and came up with his eyes full of 
water, strangling because he did not hold his 
nose, and then dad made a leap and splashed the 
water like an elephant had fallen in, and there 
those two old men were in the lake, just like kids. 
“ I'll swim you a match to the other side,” said 
the King. “It's a go,” said dad, and they started 
porpoising across the little lake, and then I 
thought it was time there was something doing; 
so I got busy and tied their clothes in knots so 
tight you couldn't get them untied without an 
act of parliament. They went ashore on the op- 
posite side of the lake, cause some women were 
driving through the grounds, and then I found 
a flock of goats grazing on the lawn, and the dog 
and I drove them to where the clothes were tied 
in knots, and when the goats began to chew the 
clothes I took the dog and went back to the en- 
trance of the park, and dad and the King swam 
back to where the clothes and the goats were, 
and when they drove the goats away, and couldn't 
untie the knots, the King gave the grand hailing 

364 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

sign of distress, or something, and the guards 
of the palace and some cavalry came on the run, 
and the park seemed filled with an army, and I 
bid the dog good-bye, and went back to the hotel 
alone and waited for dad. 

Dad didn’t get back till after dark, and when 
he came he had on a suit of the King’s clothes, 
too tight around the stomach, and too long in the 
legs, cause dad is pusey, and the King is long- 
geared. “ Did you have a good time, dad? ” says 
I, and he said, “ Haven’t you got any respect for 
age, condemn you? The King has ordered that 
you be fed to the animals in the zoo.” I told him 
I didn’t care a darn what they did with me; I 
had beeti brought up to tie knots in clothes when 
I saw people in swimming, and I didn’t care 
whether they were crowned heads or just plain 
dubs, and I asked dad how they got along when 
their clothes were chewed up. He said the sol- 
diers covered them with pouches and got them to 
the palace, and they had supper, he and the King, 
and the servants brought out a lot of clothes and 
he got the best fit he could. I asked him if the 
King was actually mad, and he said no, that he 
always enjoyed such things, and wanted dad and 

365 



“When the goats began to clieiv the clothes I took the dog and 
went back ” 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


I to come the next day and go fishing with him, 
barefooted. Say, dad can go, but I wouldn't be 
caught by that King on a bet. He would get 
even, sure, cause he has a look in his eye like they 
have in a sanitarium. Not any king business for 
your little Hennery, 


367 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XXX. 

The Bad Boy’s Delayed Letter about Holland and 
Cuba — Dad and the Boy go for a Drive in a 
Dogcart — They have a Great Time — 

Land in Cuba and See the Island 
we Fought for. 

Havana, Cuba. 

My Dear Old Greaser: 

We stopped in Holland for a couple of days 
after we left Belgium, and it was the most disap- 
pointing country we visited on our whole trip. 
We expected to be walked on with wooden shoes, 
and from what we had heard of that Duke that 
married Queen Wilhelmina, we thought we were 
going to a country where men were cruel to their 
wives, and swatted them over the head when 
things didn't go right, but when we saw the queen 
riding with her husband, as free from ostenta- 
tion as a department store clerk would ride out 
with his cash girl wife, and saw happiness beam- 
ing on the face of the queen and her husband, and 
saw them squeeze hands and look lovingly into 
each other’s eyes, we made up our minds that you 
couldn’t believe these newspaper scandals. And 

368 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

when we saw the broad-shouldered, broad-chested 
and broad-everywhere women of Holland we con- 
cluded that it would be a brave or reckless hus- 
band who would be unkind to one of them, and 
mighty dangerous because the women are 
stronger than the men, and any woman could 
whip four men at the drop of the hat, because 
she could take off her wooden shoes and strike 
out and a man would think he had been hit by 
a railroad tie. 

I do not know what makes Hollanders wear 
wooden shoes, unless they are sentenced to 
do it, or that they are unruly, and have to 
be hobbled, to keep them from jumping fences, 
but the people are so good and honest that after 
you have met them you forget the vaudeville fea- 
ture of their costumes, and love them, and wish 
the people of other countries were as honest as 
they. For two or three days we were not robbed, 
and I do not believe there is a dishonest man or 
woman in Holland, except one. There was one 
woman that played it on dad in Amsterdam, but 
I think she only played him for a sucker for a 
joke, for she laughed all the time. 

Dad was much struck at seeing the women 
selling milk from little carts, hauled by teams of 
big dogs, and he negotiated with a woman for a 

369 








PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


dog team and cart, and all one day dad and I put 
on wooden shoes, and Dutch clothes and drove 
the dog team around town, and we had the time 
of our lives, more fun than I ever had outside of a 
circus, but the shoes skinned our feet, and when 
the dogs laid down to rest, and dad couldn't talk 
dog language to make them get up and go ahead, 
he kicked the off dog with his wooden shoe, and 
the dog got up and grabbed a mouthful of dad's 
ample pants and shook dad till his teeth were 
loose, and a woman driving another mess of 
dogs had to come and choke the off dog so he 
wouldn't swallow dad, pants and all. Dad gave 
her a dollar for rescuing him, and what do you 
think ? Say, she pulled an old stocking of money 
out of her bosom and counted out ninety-six 
cents in change and gave it back to dad, and only 
charged four cents for saving his life, and that 
couldn't occur in any other country, cause in 
most places they would take the dollar and strike 
him for more. 

Dad wanted to take the dog team and cart to 
Milwaukee to give it to a friend who sells red hot 
weiners, and so we arranged to have the team 
loaded on the boat, but just before the boat sailed, 
the dog team was lying down on the dock, sleep- 
ing and scratching flees, when the woman dad 

37i 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

bought the team of came along and spoke to the 
dogs in Dutch, and, say, those dogs woke up and 
started on a regular runaway down the dock, 
after the laughing woman, and disappeared up 
the street. Just as the boat whistled to pull in the 
gang planks, dad and I stood on deck and saw the 
team disappear, and dad said, “Buncoed again, 
by gosh, and it is all your condemned fault. Why 
didn’t you hang on to that off dog.” Well, we 
lost our dog team, but we got the worth of our 
money, for we saw a people who do not eat much 
beside cabbage and milk, and they are the strong- 
est in the world, and there never was a case of 
dyspepsia in their country. W e saw a people with 
stone bruises on their heels and corns on their 
toes, smiling and laughing all the time. We met 
a people that work all the time, and never take 
any recreation except churning and rocking ba- 
bies, and yet never have to call a doctor, because 
there are no doctors except veterinary surgeons, 
who care for dogs and cattle. 

The people we met in Holland wear wooden 
shoes to teach them patience and humility. With 
wooden shoes no frenzied financier of Holland 
will ever travel the fast road of speculation, slip 
on a bucket-shop banana peel, and fall on the in- 
nocent bystander who has coughed up his savings 

372 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


and given them to the honest financier to safely 
invest. 

The bank of Holland is an old woolen stock- 
ing, and money never comes out of the stocking 
unless there is a string to it, and the string is the 
heart string of an honest people, that will stand 
no trifling. If a dishonest financier came to Hol- 
land from any other country, and did any of his 
dirty work, the women of Holland, who handle 
the funds, would give him such a hazing that he 
would never 'open his three-card monte lay-out 
in any other country. 

It is a country where you get the right 
change back, and the cows give eighteen carat 
milk, and the hens have not learned to lay small, 
cold storage eggs. It is the country for me, if the 
women would wear corsets, and not be the same 
size all the way down, so that if you hugged a 
girl you wouldn’t make a dent in her, that would 
not come out until she got her breath. 

“And we left such a country and such a peo- 
ple, to come here to Cuba, where the population 
now comprises the meanest features of the desper- 
ate and wicked Spaniards, beaten at their own 
game of loot, the trickiness of the native Cuban, 
flushed with pride because his big American 
brother helped him to drive away the Spaniard 

373 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


that he could never have gotten rid of alone, and 
with no respect for the American who helped, 
and only meets him respectfully because he is 
afraid of being thrown into the ocean if he is im- 
pudent, and the worst class of Yankee grafters 



“And the dog got up and grabbed a mouthful of Dad’s ample 
pants.” 

and highway robbers that have ever been allowed 
to stray away from the land of the free. That is 
what Cuba is to-day. 

Soulless Yankee corporations have got hold 
of most of the branches of business that* there is 
any money in, and the things that do not pay 

374 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


and never can be made to pay, are for sale 
to tenderfeet. The cuban hates the Yankee, 
the Yankee hates the Cuban, and the Span- 
iard hates both, and both hate him. In Ha- 
vana your hotel, owned by a Cuban, run by 
a Yankee, with a Spanish or Portuguese cashier, 
will take all the money you bring into it for a 
bed at night, and hold your baggage till your can 
cable for money to buy breakfast. It is a “free 
country/' of course, run by men who will fly high 
as long as they can borrow money for some one 
else to pay after they are dead, but within ten 
years the taxes will eat the people so they will be 
head over heels in debt to the Yankee and the 
Spaniard, the German and the Englishman, the 
Frenchman and the Italian, and some day 
warships will sail into Havana harbor, over 
the submerged bones of the “Maine/’ and there 
will be a fight for juicy morsels of the Cuban 
dead horse, by the congregated buzzards of 
strange navies, unless they shall shake the 
dice for the carcass, and by carefully loading the 
dice saw the whole thing ofif on to Uncle Sam, 
and make him pay the debts of the deceased re- 
public, and act as administrator for the benefit of 
the children of the sawed off republic, whose only 
asset now is climate that feels good, but contains 

375 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


germs of all diseases, and tobacco that smells 
good when it is in conflagration under your nose, 
and does not kill instantly if it is pasted up in a 
Wisconsin wrapper, that is the pure goods. 

If tobacco ever ceases to be a fad with the rich 


Jl 



Any woman could whip four men at the drop of the hat. 

consumer of fifty-cent cigars, and beet sugar is 
found to contain no first aid to Bright’s disease, 
Cuba will amount to about as much as Dry Tor- 
tugas, which has purer air, and the Isle of Pines, 
which has more tropical scenery and less yellow 

376 


PECK'S BAD BOY ABROAD 

fever. But now the Island of Cuba is a joy, and 
Havana is like Heaven, until you come to pay 
your bill, when it is hell. Streets so wide you can- 
not see a creditor on the other side, pavements as 
smooth as the road to perdition, and tropical trees, 
plants and flowers, with birds of rare plumage, 
you feel like sitting on a cold bench in the shade, 
and wishing all your friends were here to enjoy a 
taste of what will come to those who are truly 
good, in the hereafter, when suddenly you are 
taken with a chill up the spinal column, and a cold 
sweat comes out on the forehead, and the internal 
arrangements go on a strike because of the cold, 
perspiring cucumber you had for lunch, and you 
go to the doctor, who does not do a thing to you, 
but scare you out of your boots by talking of 
cholera, and giving you the card of his partner, 
the undertaker, telling you never to think of dy- 
ing in a tropical country without being embalmed, 
because you look so much better when you are 
delivered at your home by the express company, 
and then he gives you pills and a bill, and an 
alarm clock that goes off every hour to take a 
pill by, and furnishes you an officer to go home 
to your hotel with you to collect his bill, and you 
pawn your watch and sleeve buttons for a steer- 
age ticket to New York, where you arrive as soon 

377 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


as the Lord will let you, and stay as long as He 
thinks is good for you. 

Dad has not been much good in Havana, 
cause he wanted to see the whole business 
in one day. He got a row boat and went 
out in the harbor to where the back-bone of the 
“Maine” acts as a monument to the fellows who 
yet sleep in the mud of the bottom, and after tying 
a little American flag on the rigging that sticks 
up above the water, and damning the villains who 
blew up the good ship, we went back to town and 
drove out to the cemetery where several hundred 
of our boys are buried, where we left flowers on 
the graves and a cuss in the balmy air for the 
guilty wretches who fired the bomb, and then we 
went back to the city and walked the beautiful 
streets, until dad began to have cramps, from try- 
ing to eat all the fruit he could hold, and then it 
was all off, and I was going to call a carriage to 
take him to the hotel, when dad saw a negro 
astride a single ox, hitched to a cart, who had 
come in from the country, and dad said he wanted 
to ride in that cart, if it was the last act of his 
life, and as dad was beginning to swell up from 
the fruit he had eaten, I thought he better ride 
in an open cart, cause in a carriage he might swell 
up so we couldn’t get him out of the door when 

378 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


we got to the hotel, so I hired the negro, got dad 
in the cart, and we started, but the ox walked so 
slow I was afraid we would never get dad there 
alive, so I told the negro dad had the cholera, and 
that settled, for he kicked the slats of the ox in 
with his heels, and the ox bellowed and run away, 
and the negro turned pale from fright, and I 
guess the runaway ride on the cobble stone pave- 
ment was what saved dad’s life, for the swelling 
in dad’s inside began to go down, and when we 
got to the hotel he got out of the cart alone, and 
I knew he was better, for he shook himself, gul- 
luped up wind, and said, “You think you are dam 
smart, don’t you?” So I will close. 

Yours, 

Hennery. 


379 


PECK'S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

The Bad Boy Calls on the Old Groceryman and Gets 
Acquainted with his New Dog — Off again 
to See America. 

The old grocerman was sitting m the old gro- 
cery one fine spring morning, looking over his 
accounts, as they were written on a quire of 
brown wrapping paper with a blunt lead pencil, 
and wondering where he could go to collect 
money to pay a note that was due at the bank at 
noon on that day. He was looking ten years 
older than he did the year before, when the Bad 
Boy had played his last trick on the old man, and 
gone abroad to chaperone his sick father, in a 
search for health and adventure. The old man 
had missed the boy around the grocery, and with 
no one to keep his blood circulating, and his tem- 
perature occasionally soaring above the normal, 
he had failed in health, and had read with mixed 
feelings of joy, fear and resentment that the Bad 
Boy and his dad had arrived home, and he knew 
it could not be long before the boy would blow 
in, and he was trying to decide whether to meet 
the boy cheerfully and with a spirit of resigna- 
380 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


tion, or to meet him with a club, whether to give 
him the glad hand, or form himself into a col- 
umn of fours to drive him out when he came. 

He had accumulated a terrier dog since the boy 
went away, to be company for the old singed cat, 
to hunt rats in the cellar, and to watch the store 
nights. The dog was barking down cellar, and 
the old man went down the rickety stairs to see 
what the trouble was, and while he was down 
there helping. the dog to tree a rat under a sack of 
potatoes, the Bad Boy slipped into the store, and 
finding the old man absent, he crawled under the 
counter, curled up on a cracker box, and began to 
snore as the old man came up the stairs, followed 
by the dog, with a rat in its mouth. The old man 
heard the snore, and wondered if he had been 
entertaining a tramp unawares, when the dog 
dropped the rat, and rushing behind the counter 
began to growl, and grabbed the Bad Boy by the 
seat of his trousers and gave him a good shaking, 
while the boy set up a yell that caused the plas- 
ter to fall, and the old man to almost faint with 
excitement, and he went to the door to call a po- 
liceman, when the boy kicked the dog off, and 
raised up from behind the counter, causing the 
old cat to raise her back and spit cotton, and as 
the old man saw the Bad Boy he leaned against 

381 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

the show case and a large smile came over his 
face, and he said: “ Gee whiz, where did you 
get on?” 

“ The porter was not in, so I turned in in the 
first lower berth I came to,” said the Bad Boy, 
as he jumped over the counter and grabbed the 
old man by the arm and shook his hand until it 
ached. “ Introduce me to your friend, the dog, 
who seems to have acquired an appetite for 
pants,” and the Bad Boy got behind the old man 
and kicked at the dog, who was barking as 
though he had a cat on the fence. 

“ Get out, Tige,” said the old man, as he pushed 
the dog away. “ You have got to get used to this 
young heathen,” and he hugged the bright-look- 
ing, well-dressed boy as though he was proud of 
him. 

“ What are good fat rats selling for now ? ” 
asked the boy, as his eye fell on the rat the 
terrier had brought out of the cellar. “ I did 
not know you had added a meat market to your 
grocery. Now, in Paris the rat business is a very 
important industry, but I didn’t know the peo- 
ple ate them here. What do you retail them at? ” 

“ O, get out, I don’t sell rats,” said the' old 
man, indignantly. “ I got this dog for company, 
in your place, and he has proved himself more 

382 



“Dog docs kinder act as though he had something on his mind ” 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


useful than any boy I ever saw. Say, come and 
sit down by the stove, and tell me all about your 
trip, as your letters to me were not very full of 
information. How is your father's health?" 

“ Dad is the healthiest man in America," said 
the boy, as he handed the old man a Turkish 
cigarette, with a piece of cheese under the to- 
bacco about half an inch from where the old man 
lighted it with a match. “ Dad is all right, ex- 
cept his back. He slept four nights with a cork 
life preserver strapped to his back, cpming over, 
and he has got curvature of the spine, but the 
doctor has strapped a board to dad’s backh and 
says when his back warps back to fit the board he 
will be sound again." 

“ Say, this is a genuine Turkish cigarette, 
isn’t it," said the old man, as he puffed away at it, 
and blew the smoke through his nose. “ I have 
always wanted to smoke a genuine, imported 
cigarette. Got a flavor something like a Welsh 
rabbit, ain’t it ? " and the old man looked at the 
cigarette where the frying cheese was soaking 
through the paper. “ Gee, but I can’t go that," 
and he threw it away, and looked sea sick. 

“ Turks always take cheese in their cigar- 
ettes," said the Bad Boy. “ They get a smoke 
and food at the same time. But if you feel sick 

384 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

you can go out in the back yard and I will wait 
for you.” 

“ No, I will be all right,” said the old man, as 
he got up to wait on a customer. “ Here, try a 
glass of my cider,” and he handed the boy a dirty 
glass half filled with cider which the boy drank, 
and then looked queer at the old man. 

“ Tastes like it smells going through the oil 
belt in Indiana,” said the boy. “ What's in it? ” 

“ Kerosene,” said the old man. “ The Turks 
like kerosene in their cider. They get drink and 
light, if they touch a match to their breath. Say, 
that makes us even. Now, tell me, what coun- 
try did your dad get robbed the most in while 
you were abroad ? ” 

“ Well, it was about a stand off,” said the boy, 
as he made a slip noose on the end of a piece of 
twine, and was trying to make a hitch over the 
bob tail of the groceryman's dog, with an idea 
of fastening a tomato can to the string a little 
later, and turning the dog loose. “ Do you know,” 
said he to the old man, “ that I think it is wrong 
to cut off a dog's tail, cause when you tie a tin 
can to it you feel as though you were taking ad- 
vantage of a cripple. 

“ Well, all the countries we visited robbed dad 
of all the money he had, one way or another, 

385 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


sooner or later ; even our own country, when we 
arrived in New York, took his roll for duty on 
some little things he smuggled, but I think the 
combination of robbers at Carlsbad stuck to- 
gether and got the goods off dad in the most 
systematic manner. Some way they got news 
when we arrived, of the exact amount of money 
dad had got out of the bank, and before we had 
breakfast the fakers had divided it up among 
themselves, and each one knew just what was 
going to be his share, and it was just like getting 
a check from home for them. If we were going 
there again we would give the money to some 
particular faker to divide with the rest, and then 
take a few swallows of their rotten egg water, 
and get out. 

“ Say, did you ever eat a piece of custard pie 
made out of stale eggs? Well, that is just about 
the same as the Carlsbad water, only the water is 
not baked with a raw crust on the bottom. But 
the doctor dad consulted was the peach. Dad 
asked him how much of the water he ought to 
drink, and the doctor held a counsel with him- 
self, and said dad might drink all he could hold, 
and when dad asked him how much his charges 
were he said, ‘ Oh, wait till you are cured/ So 
dad thought he was not going to charge for his 

386 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

advice, but after we had drank the water for ten 
days, and dad was so weak he couldn’t brush {he 
flies off his bald spot, we decided to go to rest 
cure, and when we had our tickets bought the 
doctor attached our baggage, and had a bill 
against dad for four hundred and sixty dollars 
for consultations, operations, advice, board and 
borrowed money, and he had a dozen witnesses 
to prove every item. Dad paid it, but we are go- 
ing there once more with a keg of dynamite for 
that doctor. But dad thinks he got the worth 
of his money. 

“ You remember before he went away he 
thought the doctors who operated on him for that 
’pendecitus left a monkey wrench in him when 
they sewed him up. Well, after he began to drink 
that water he found iron rust on the towels when 
he took a bath, and he believes the monkey- 
wrench was sweat out of him. Say, does your 
dog like candy ? ” 

“ O, yes, he eats a little,” said the groceryman, 
and the boy tossed a piece of candy such as he 
gave the King of Spain, with cayenne pepper in 
it, to the dog, which swallowed it whole, and the 
old man said, “ Now I suppose your father is 
cured, you will all stay at home for a while, and 
settle down to decent citizenship, and take an 

387 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


active part in the affairs of your city and state? 
Gee, but what is the matter with the dog? " added 
the old man, as the dog jumped up on all fours, 
looked cross-eyed, and tried to dig a hole in his 
stomach with his hind leg. 

“ O, no, we shall never stay home much more," 
said the Bad Boy, getting up on a barrel and pull- 
ing his feet up to get away from the dog, which 
was beginning to act queer. “ You see, dad got 
cured all right, of a few diseases that were carry- 
ing him off, but he has taken the ‘ jumps/ a dis- 
ease that is incurable. When a man has the 
‘jumps' he can’t stay long in one place, but his life 
after taking the disease is one continual round of 
packing up and unpacking, his literature is time 
cards and railroad guides, and his meals are 
largely taken at railroad eating houses, sitting 
on a stool, and his sleep is uncertain cat naps. 
Say, that dog acts as though the mouthful he 
took out of my pants under the counter didn't 
agree with him," added the boy, as the dog rolled 
over and tried to stand on his head. 

“ Dog does act kinder like he had something 
on his mind," said the old man, as he got out of 
the dog's way, so he could do his acrobatic stunt. 
" Where is your dad going next trip ? Seems as 
388 


PECK'S BAD BOY ABROAD 

t hough he would want to stay home long enough 
to change his shirt.” 

“ Don't have to change your shirt when you 
travel,” said the boy, as he slipped an imitation 
snake into the side pocket of the old grocery- 
man's sack coat. “We are going to see all 
the world, now that we have started in the 
traveling industry, but our next move will be 
chasing ourselves around our own native land. 
Say, if you have never been vaccinated against 
mad dog, you better take something right now, 
for that dog is mad, and in about two minutes he 
is going to begin to snap at people, and there is no 
death so terrible as death from a mad dog bite. 
Gee, but I wouldn't be in your place for a mil- 
lion dollars.” And the boy stood up on the bar- 
rel, and was beginning to yell “mad dog,” when 
the old man asked what he could take to make 
him immune from the bite of a mad dog. 

“ Eat a bottle of horseradish,” said the boy, as 
he reached over to the shelves and got a bottle, 
and pulled the cork. “ Eminent scientists agree 
that horseradish is the only thing that will get 
the system in shape to withstand and throw off 
the mad dog virus,” and he handed the old man 
the bottle and he began to eat it, and cry, and 
choke, and the boy got down from the barrel and 

389 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


let the dog out doors, and he made a bee-line for 
the lake. 

“ He's a water dog all right," said the boy, and 
as a servant girl came in to buy some soap, and 
saw the old man eating raw horseradish and 
choking and looking apoplectic, she asked what 
was the matter with the old man, and the boy 
said a mad dog just escaped from the store, and 
that the old man had shown signs of madness 
ever since ; the girl gave a yell and rushed out into 
the world without her soap. “ Let this be a les- 
son to you to be kind to dumb animals," said the 
boy to the old man, as he finished the bottle of 
horseradish, and put his hands on his stomach. 

“Write to me, won't you?" said the old 
groceryman, “and may the fiercest grizzly bear 
get you, and eat you, condemn you," and the old 
man opened the door and pointed to the street. 

“ Sure," said the Bad Boy. “ I will write you 
but beware of the dog. Good-bye. You are a 
good thing. Push yourself along," and the Bad 
Boy went out to pack up for another journey. 


390 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

The Bad Boy Relates the Automobile Ride he and 
Dad took — They Sneak out of Town. 

“Give me a package of your strongest break- 
fast food, and a big onion/’ said the bad boy, as 
he came into the grocery, looking as weak as a 
^fever convalescent, “and I want to eat the onion 
right now.” 

“Well, that is a combination, sure enough,” 
said the old groceryman as he wrapped a package 
of breakfast food in a paper and watched the boy 
rub half an onion on a salt bag, and eat it greed- 
ily. “What is the matter with you to look so sick, 
and eat raw onion before breakfast?” 

“Oh, it is this new-fashioned way of living that 
is killing little Hennery. When I lived at home 
before we used to have sassidge and pancakes for 
breakfast, roast meat for dinner and cold meat 
for supper, and dad was healthy as a tramp, ma 
could dance a highland fling, I could play all 
kinds of games and jump over a high board fence 
when anybody was chasing me. Now we have 
some kind of breakfast food three times a day 


39i 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


because ma reads the advertisements, and dad is 
so weak he has to be helped to dress, ma goes 
moping around like a fashionable invalid, I am 
so tired I can’t hit a window with a snowball, and 
the dog that used to fight cats now wants to lay in 



“Jerusalem, but you are a sight ” said the old groceryman. 

front of the grate and wish he was dead. Gosh, 
but there ought to be a law that any man that 
invents a new breakfast food should be compelled 
to eat it. Gee, but that onion gives a man 
strength.” 

“I should think so,” said the old grocery man, 


392 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


as he took a rag and set it on fire and let the 
smoke purify the room. “But I suppose your folks 
are like a great many others who have quit eat- 
ing meat on account of the meat trust, and are 
going to die in their tracks on health food. Is 
your dad going out to-day to get the fresh air 
and brace up for his next trip?” 

“No, dad is going to stay in the house. He 
wants ma to get him a female trained nurse, but 
ma kicks. They had a trained nurse for a week, 
once; but ma had one of these little electric flash- 
lights that you touch a button and it lights up the 
room like a burglar was in the house, and she 
used to get up in the night and flash the light into 
dad’s room. Dad always had nervous prostra- 
tion after ma flashed the light, and the nurse 
fainted dead away, so ma and I are going to do 
the nursing until dad is strong enough to travel 
again, and then he and I skip.” 

“Where are you going first?” asked the old 
grocery man, as he opened the door to let the 
odor of onion and burned rag out of the room. 
“What kind of treatment do the doctors advise to 
bring the old man around so he will be himself 
again ?” 

“They want him to go where he can take baths, 
and gamble, and attend horse races, and go into 

393 



" Dad said, ‘ Good shot, 


Hennery ” 




FECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

fast society, and maybe have a fight or two so as 
to stir his blood, and we have decided to take him 
first to the hot springs and turn him loose, and 
we are packing up .now and shall go next week. 
They tell me that at the Arkansaw Hot Springs 
you can get into any kind of a scrape you want, 
and you don’t have to look around for trouble. 
It comes to you. Oh, we won’t do a thing down 
there. I broke the news to dad last night, 
and he said that was good enough for 
him, and he has packed up his poker chips and 
some marked cards he used to win money with 
from the deacons in the church, and he wants to 
go as quick as possible. You will have to excuse 
me now, for I am going to take dad out in an au- 
tomobile after breakfast to give him his first dose 
of excitement. I will make dad think that auto- 
mobiling is a sport next to fox hunting, and I 
will drop in this afternoon and tell you about it,” 
and the bad boy- took his breakfast food and went 
home. 

“Jerusalem, but you are a sight,” said the 
groceryman late in the afternoon, as the bad boy 
came in with a pair of black goggles on, his coat 
torn down the back and his pants ripped up the 
legs. “What a time you must have had in the 
automobile. Did you run over anybody?” 

395 


PECK'S BAD BOY ABROAD 

“Everybody,” said the bad boy, as he pinned 
his trousers leg together with a safety pin. “There 
they go now with dad in a milk wagon. Say, 
these airships that run on the ground give a man 
all the excitement he needs.” 

“Hurry up and tell me about your automobile 
ride,” said the groceryman, as he brushed off the 
bad boy’s clothes with an old blacking brush. 

“Well, dad said he had never taken a ride in 
one of the devil wagons, though he had got a good 
deal of exercise the last year or two dodging them 
on the streets, but he said he was tickled to death 
to hear that I was an expert performer, and he 
would go out with me, and if he liked the sensa- 
tion, he would buy one. The machine I hired was 
one of those doublets for two persons, one seat, 
you know, a runabout. It was a runabout all 
right. It run about eighteen miles in fifteen min- 
utes. I got dad tucked in, and touched her on a 
raw spot, and we were off. I run her around 
town for a while on the streets that had no teams 
on, and dad was pleased. He said: 

“ ‘Hennery, I like a boy that knows something 
about machinery, and who knows what dingus to 
touch to make his machine do a certain thing, 
and I am proud of you.’ 

“We had to go through the business part of 

396 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


town, and dad looked around at the people on the 
streets that he knew, and he swelled up and tried 
to look as though he owned a brewery, and told 
me to let her out, and I thought if dad could 



“It rained bananas and the Dago came down on his head” 

stand it to let her out I could, so I pulled her open 
just as one of these station fruit venders with a 
hand cart was crossing the street. The cow- 
catcher in front caught the hand cart right in the 
middle and threw it into the air and it rained ba- 


397 


PECK'S BAD BOY ABROAD 


nanas and oranges, and the dago came down on 
his head and swore in Italian, and dad said, ‘Good 
shot, Hennery/ and then the machine swung 
across the street and knocked the fender off a 
street car, and then I got her in the road straight 
and by gosh I couldn’t stop her. Something had 
got balled up, and the more I touched things the 
faster she went. We frightened four teams and 
had three runaways, and the air seemed full of 
horses rearing up and drivers yelling for us to 
stop. One farmer with a load of hay would not 
give any. of the road, and I guess his hay came in 
contact with the gasoline tank, for the hay took 
fire, his team ran away, and as we went over the 
hill I looked back and saw a fire engine trying to 
catch up with the red-hot load of hay, and the 
farmer had grabbed hold of a wire sign across 
the street and let the wagon run out from under 
him, and they had to take him down with a fire 
ladder. 

“We kept going faster, and dad began to get 
frightened and asked me to slow up, but I couldn’t. 
We must have got in the country about eight 
miles, and dad was getting scared, and his face 
was just the color of salt pork, and he said: 

“ ‘Hennery, this excursion is going to wind up 
in a tragedy, and if I die I want you to have a 

398 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


post-mortem examination made, just to see if I 
am right about those doctors leaving that mon- 
key wrench in me. For heaven’s sake make the 
machine jump that fence, for here comes a drove 
of cattle in the road, more’n a hundred horned 
steers, and we never can pass them alive.” 

“Gee, but when I saw those cattle ahead and 
the machine running away, I tried to pray, and 
then I steered her towards an old rail fence that 
looked as though it was rotten, and then there 
was a crash, the air was full of rails, and dad 
said, 'This is no hurdle race,’ and we landed in 
a field where there was -an old hard snow bank. 
She went up on the side, hit the frozen snow^ 
turned a summersault, the gasoline tank exploded 
and I didn’t remember anything till some farmers 
that were spreading manure in the field turned 
me over with a pitchfork, and asked me who the 
old dead man was standing on his head in the 
snow bank with his plug hat around his neck. 
As soon as I came to I went to dad, and he was 
just coming out of a trance, and asked him if he 
didn’t think a little excitement sort of made the 
sluggish blood circulate, and he looked at the 
blood on the snow, and said he thought there was 
no doubt about the circulation of his blood. 

“He got up, got his hat untangled, told the 

399 



“The farmer had grabbed hold of a wire sign across the street.” 


i 





PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

farmers he was obliged to them for their cour- 
tesy and then he called me one side and said : 

“ 'Hennery, this attempt on your part to mur- 
der me was not the success that you expected, but 
you keep on and you will get me all right. Now, 
as a business man, I want to say we have got 
to get out of this town to-night or we will be ar- 
rested and sent to the penitentiary ; besides, I will 
have to pay a thousand dollars damage at the 
least calculation. Get me a carriage for home, 
and you stay and set this machine on fire and 
skip back to town in time for the evening train 
south, and we will go where the climate is more 
genial/ 

“Just then the steers we saw in the road came 
into the field through the fence we had broken, 
and when they smelled the blood they began to 
paw and beller, and look like they would run 
at dad, so the farmers got dad into a milk wagon 
that was going to town, and when the wagon 
started dad was pouring a cup of milk on him 
where the gasoline had scorched him when it ex- 
ploded, and I walked in town helping the fellows 
drive the steers, and here I am, alive and ready to 
travel at 8 p. m. 

“If my chum comes around tell him I will write 
him from Hot Springs and give him the news.” 


401 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

“If that don’t beat anything I ever heard of,” 
said the old grocery man. “I have always been 
afraid of those automobiles, and when one of the 
horns blow I go in the first gate, say my prayers 
and wait for it to go by and run over some one 



“ Hennery , this attempt on your part to murder me was not the 
success you expected ” 

farther down the block. Did your dad say any- 
thing about buying an automobile after he came 
to?” 

“Yes, as I remember it, he said he would see 
me in h — first, or something like that. He re- 


402 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


marked, as he got in the milk wagon, that every 
man that owned an automobile ought to be ex- 
amined by an insanity expert and sent to the peni- 
tentiary for letting concealed weapons carry him. 

“Well, good-by, old man,” and the bad boy 
went limping out of the grocery to go home and 
tell his mother that he and dad had been scoring 
up for the good time they were going to have 
when they got out on the road for dad’s health. 


403 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 

The Bad Boy Writes his Chum not to get so Gay — 
Dad’s Experience with the Pecarries. 

“Hot Springs, Ark. — My dear old chum : Dad 
and I got here three days ago, and have begun to 
enjoy life. We didn’t leave home a minute too 
soon, as we would have been arrested for run- 
ning over that banana peddler, and for arson in 
setting a load of hay on fire and destroying the 
farmer’s pants in our automobile accident. Ma 
writes that a policeman and a deputy sheriff have 
camped on our front doorstep ever since we left, 
waiting for dad and I to show up. Dad wants 
me to tell you to notify the officers that they can 
go plum, as we shall never come back. Tell them 
we have gone to Panama, or Mexico, or any old 
place. 

“By the way, kid, I shall have to give you a 
little fatherly advice. When dad and I were at 
the bank getting a wad to travel with, I asked 
one of the clerks how it was that the bank dis- 
pensed with your services, after you had been 
there nearly a year, and had got your salary up 


404 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


to $6o a month, and were just becoming worth 
your salt. He said you got too fresh, that every 
new responsibility that was put upon you caused 
your chest to swell, and that you walked around 
as though you were president of the bank, and 
that you got ashamed to carry your lunch to the 
bank, to eat it in the back room, but went out to 
a restaurant and ordered the things to eat that 
came under the 15-cent list, whether you liked 
the food or not, just to show off; and instead of 
quietly eating the wholesome lunch your mother 
put up for you, and being good natured, you ate 
the restaurant refuse, and got cross, and all for 
style, showing that you had got the big head; and 
that you demanded an increase of salary, like a 
walking delegate, and got fired, as you ought to 
have been ; and now you are walking on your up- 
pers, and are ashamed to look into the bank, 
which you think is going to fail because you have 
withdrawn your support. Dad arranged with the 
managers to take you back on probation, so you 
go and report for duty just as though you had 
been off on a vacation, and then you try and have 
some sense. Dad says you should get to the bank 
before you are expected, and stay a little while 
after it is time to quit, and don’t watch the clock 
and get your coat on before it strikes, and don’t 

405 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


make a center rush for the door, as though you 
were escaping from jail. Let those above you 
see that there is not enough for you to do, and 
that you are anxious to help all around the place. 
Look upon a bale of money just as you would 
look upon a bale of hay if you were work- 



“Dad sat in the parlor with a widow until the porter had to tell 
him to cut it out ” 

ing in a feed store, and don’t look covetous 
upon a pile of bills, and wonder how much 
there is in it, and think how much you could 
buy with it if it was yours. It is just a part 
of the business, that pile of money is, and it is 
not your place to brood over it with venom in 

406 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


your eyes, or some day you will reach out and 
take a little, and look guilty, and if they don’t 
find you out, you will take a bigger slice next 
time, and go and blow yourself for clothes as 
good as the president of the bank wears, and 
some night you will open a small bottle of wine, 
and put your thumbs in the arm-holes of your 
vest, and imagine you are 'it/ and when you flash 
your roll to pay the score, the quiet man at an- 
other table in the saloon, who has been drinking 
pop, and whom you were sorry for, he looked so 
forlorn, will take you into the police station, and 
they will search you, and you will break down and 
blubber, and then it is all off, and the next day 
you will be before a judge, and your broken- 
hearted mother will be there trying to convince 
the judge that somebody must have put the money 
in your pocket to ruin you, some one jealous of 
your great success as a banker, but the judge will 
know how you came by the money, and you will 
go over the road, your mother goes to the grave, 
and your friends will say it is a pity about you. 

“Men who employ boys know that half of them 
will never amount to a tinker’s dam, a quarter of 
them will just pass muster, and if they can’t run 
the place in a year they will find another job, and 
two out of the 20 will be what are needed in the 


407 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

business. The boy who is always looking for an- 
other job is the one that never finds one that suits 
him. The two boys out of the twenty will seem 
to look a little rustier each year as to clothes but 
their round, rosy faces will change from year to 
year, the jaws begin to show strength, the eyes 
get to looking through you, and the forehead 
seems to expand as the brain gets to working. 

“The successful boys out of the bunch remind 
me of the automatic repeating rifle, that you put 
ten cartridges in and pull the trigger and shoot 
ten times with your eyes shut, if you want to, and 
it hits where you point it. Every time an em- 
ployer pulls the trigger on a successful business 
boy, and a good idea of business is fired, the recoil 
puts a new idea into the chamber, and you pull 
again, and so on until the magazine of the brainy 
boy is emptied, when you load him up again, and 
he is ready for business, and the employer 
wouldn’t be without him, and would not go back 
to the old-fashioned one-idea boy, that goes off 
half-cocked when not pointed at anything in par- 
ticular, apd whose ideas get stuck in the barrel 
and h§:/e to be pulled out with a wormer, and 
primed with borrowed powder, and touched off 
Uy the neighbors, most of whom get powder in 
their eyes, unless they look the other way when 
408 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


the useless employe goes off, for anything in the 
world. So, chum, you go back to the bank and 
become an automatic repeater in business, with 
ideas to distribute to others, instead of borrow- 
ing ideas, and you will own the bank some day. 



“Now, kid, you don’t want to go pedaling this 
around among the neighbors, but dad and I are 
having the time of our lives here, and since d d 
has begun to get acquainted with the ladies here 
at the hotel, and the millionaire sports, he is get- 


409 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


ting well, and acts like old times. He sat in the 
parlor of the hotel with a widow the first night 
until the porter had to tell him to cut it out. Say, 
I got asleep three or four times on a lounge in 
the parlor, waiting for dad to get to the 'continued 
in our next’ in talking with that widow about his 
wealth, and his loneliness since ma died. He 
said he didn’t know what he was worth, because 
he didn't pay any attention to any of his bonds and 
securities, except his Standard Oil stock, because 
the dividends on that stock came regular and 
increased a little every quarter. Gee, but I 
wanted to tell her that all the interest he 
had in Standard Oil was a gallon kerosene can 
with a potato stuck in the spout, and when we 
went to bed I told him that woman’s husband was 
behind the door of the parlor all the time listen- 
ing, and he had a gun in his hip pocket, and would 
call him out for a duel the next morning, sure. 
Dad didn’t sleep good that night, and the next 
morning I got a gambler to look cross at dad and 
size him up, and dad didn't eat any breakfast. 
After breakfast I had the hotel stenographer 
write a challenge to dad, and demand satisfaction 
for alienating the afifections of his wife, and dad 
began to get weak in the knees. He showed me 
the challenge, and I told him the only way to 


410 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


do in this climate was to walk around and punch 
his cane on the floor, and look mad, and talk loud, 
and the challenger would know he was a fiery 
fighter, and would apologize, and dad walked 
around town and through the hotel office most of 



“Dad, was up on a limb and the wild animals were jumping up 
to eat his shoes” 

the day, fairly frothing at the mouth, and he 
thinks he has scared the challenger away, and, 
as the woman is gone, dad thinks he is a hero. 

“But the worst thing has happened and it will 
take a week to grow new skin on dad’s legs. He 
got acquainted with a bunch of men who were 

41 1 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


bear hunters and sports, and they talked of the 
hear shooting in Arkansas, and dad told about 
how he had killed tigers, lions, elephants and 
things until they thought he was great. Dad never 
saw one of those animals except in a menagerie, 
but when they suggested that he go with them on 
a bear hunt, he bit like a bass, and the whole bunch 
went off in a buckboard one morning with guns, 
lunches, hounds, bottles, and all kinds of ammu- 
nition. They didn’t let me go but when the crowd 
came back about midnight, and they carried dad 
up to his room, and sent for a doctor, one of the 
horse race men who went along told me all 
about it. 

“He said they went out in a canebrake and sta- 
tioned dad on a runway for bear, and put in the 
dogs about a mile away in the swamp, and they 
left him there for five hours, and when they went 
to where he was, there was a drove of wild hogs, 
or peccaries, under a tree, and dad was up on 
a limb, praying, his gun on the ground; his coat 
was chewed by the wild pigs, and the wild ani- 
mals were jumping up to eat his shoes. The fel- 
lows hid behind trees and listened to dad confess 
his sins, and pray, and promise to do better, and 
be a good man, and when a wild pig would gnash 
his teeth and make a jump at him, he would talk 


412 



“Dad was up on a limb praying, his gun on the ground and his 

coattails chewed by the wild pigs,” 


s 





PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


swear words at the pig, and then he would put 
up his hands and ask forgiveness, and promise to 
lead a different life, and say what a fool he was 
to be off down here in the sunny south being eaten 
alive by wild hogs, when he ought to be home en- 
joying religion. Just as dad was about to die 
there on the limb of a shagbark hickory, the fel- 
lows behind the trees touched off a small dyna- 
mite cartridge and threw it under the tree, and 
when it exploded the wild hogs ran away, dad 
fell off the limb, and he was rescued. He was a 
sight, for sure, when they brought him to the 
hotel; his clothes were torn off, his stomach lac- 
erated, and when he was stuck together with 
plasters, and I was alone with him, he said he 
was as good a bear hunter as ever came down 
the pike, but he never worked in a slaughter 
house, and didn’t know anything about slaugh- 
tering pigs, and besides, if he ever got out again, 
and able to use a gun, he would put that bunch 
of hunters that took him out in the canbrakes 
under the sod. He said while he sat up the tree 
praying for strength to endure the ordeal he had 
a revelation that there wasn’t a bear within a 
hundred miles, and that those fellows had the 
hogs trained to scare visitors to Hot Springs, so 
they could be easy to rob. He said one fellow 


414 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

borrowed $50 of him to pay into the state treas- 
ury for wear and tear on the wild hogs. Well, 
dad had forgotten about the monkey-wrench in 
his system, and I guess we are going to enjoy 
ourselves here in the old-fashioned way. Yours 
all right, 

“Hennery.” 


415 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

The Bad Boy and his Dad have Trouble with a new 
Breakfast Food — Dad Rides a Bucking Broncho. 

San Antonio, Texas. — My Dear Chum: Dad 
and I left Hot Springs because the man who 
kept the hotel where we stopped got prejudiced 
against me. I suppose I did carry the thing a 
little too far. You see dad has got into this 
breakfast food habit, and reads all the advertise- 
ments that describe new inventions of breakfast 
food, and he has got himself so worked up over 
the bran mash that he is losing appetite for any- 
thing substantial, and he is getting weak and 
nutty. Ma told me when I went away with dad 
that she wanted me to try my best to break dad 
of the breakfast food habit, and I promised to do 
it. Say, kid, if you ever expect to succeed in 
life, you have got to establish a reputation for 
keeping your promises. Truth is mighty, and 
when anybody can depend upon a boy to do as 
he agrees his fortune is made. Dad saw a new 
breakfast food advertised in an eastern maga- 
zine, and as the hotel people only kept thirty or 

416 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

forty kinds of mockingbird food for guests, dad 
made me go out to the groceries and round up 
the new kind. I brought a box to the table at 
breakfast, and dad fell over himself to .fill his 
saucer, and then he offered some to eight board- 
ers that sat at our table. Dad had been brag- 
ging for a week about how he had adopted the 
breakfast food fad, first for his health, and then 
to get even with the beef trust. He had con- 
vinced the boarders at our table that it was a 
patriotic duty of every citizen to shut down on 
eating meat until the criminal meat trust was 
ruined. 

'The breakfast food I put up on dad was some 
pulverized cork that I got at a grocery out of a 
barrel of California grapes. It looked exactly 
like other breakfast food, but you’d a dide to 
see dad and several invalid southern colonels, 
and two women who were at the table, pour 
cream on that pulverized cork, and sprinkle sugar 
on it, and try to get the pulverized cork to soak 
up the cream, but the particles of cork floated on 
top of the cream, and acted alive. An old con- 
federate colonel, who had called dad a dam yan- 
kee ever since we had been there, and always 
acted as though he was on the point of drawing 
a gun, took the first mouthful, and after chew- 

417 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

ing it a while he swallowed as though his throat 
was sore, but he got it down, and ordered a cock- 
tail, and looked mad at dad. Dad noticed that 
the others were having difficulty in masticating 
the food, and so he pitched in and ate his food 



“ Hennery , I feel as though your dad was not very long for this 
world.” 

and said it was the finest he ever tasted, but the 
rest of the crowd only took a spoonful pr two, 
and et fruit. One woman who is there to be 
cured of the habit of betting on the races, got 
the cork in amongst her false teeth and it 
418 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


squeaked when she chewed, like pulling a cork 
out of a beer bottle. They all seemed to want 
to please dad, and so they munched away at the 
cork, until the woman with the false teeth had 
to leave the table, then a colonel went out, and 
then all quit the table except dad and I, and by 
that time dad felt as though he had swallowed 
a life preserver, and he said to me : 

“ ‘Hennery, either the baths or the climate, or 
something has upset me, and I feel as though 
your dad was not very long for this world. Be- 
fore I die I want you to confess to me what that 
stuff is that I have been eating, and I can die in 
peace V 

“I told him that he had wanted a light break- 
fast, and I thought there was nothing quite so 
light as cork, and that he was full clear to the 
muzzle with pulverized cork, and he couldn't sink 
any more when he took a bath. Dad turned pale 
and we went out in the office and found that all 
the people who sat at our table, and ate break- 
fast food were in the hands of doctors, and dad 
went in the room with them, and each had a doc- 
tor, and how they got it out of them I don't 
know, as I was busy organizing a strike among 
the bell boys. I told them they could double their 
wages by striking at exactly ten o'clock, when 

419 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


all the boarders wanted cocktails sent to their 
rooms. 

“They struck all right, and the breakfast food 
people had all got pumped out, and then it came 
my turn. Dad gave me a licking, the boarders 
kicked at me, the landlord ordered me out of the 
house, and the striking bell boys who had their 
places filled in ten minutes, chased me all over 
town, and when I got back to the hotel dad had 
bought tickets to San Antonio, because the doc- 
tor told him to get out on the prairies and take 
horseback exercise to shake the pulverized cork 
and the monkey-wrench out of his system, and 
everybody threw stones at the buss that we rode 
to the depot in. Gosh, but I hate a town where 
genius has no chance against the mob element. 
The worst was that woman with the false teeth, 
because she lost them somewhere, and had to 
hold her handkerchief over her mouth while she 
called me names when the porter took me by the 
collar and the pants and flung me into the buss. 
Dad told the porter, when he handed out the reg- 
ular ‘tip/ that he would have made it larger if 
the porter had taken an axe to me. Dad is get- 
ting so funny he almost makes me laugh. 

“Well, kid, we arrived here next day, and got 
acclimated before night. Dad bought a wide 


420 






Dad among the cowboys. 


PECK'S BAD BOY ABROAD 


gray cowboy hat, with a leather strap for a band, 
and began to pose as a regular old rough rider, 
and told everybody at the hotel that he was going 
to buy a ranch, and run for congress. Every- 
body here is willing a northern man should buy 
a ranch, but when he talks about running for 
Congress they look sassy at him, but dad can 
look just as sassy as anybody here. He told all 
around that he was a cavalry veteran of the war, 
and wanted to get a horse to ride that would stir 
up his patriotic instincts and his liver, and all 
his insides, and a real kind man steered dad to 
a livery stable, and I knew by the way the na- 
tives winked at each other that they were going 
to let him have a horse that would jounce him 
all right. 

“They saddled up a real nice pony for me, but 
when they led out the horse for dad I knew that 
trouble was coming. The horse was round shoul- 
dered on the back, and when they put the saddle 
on the horse humped up and coughed most piti- 
ful, and when they fastened the cinch the horse 
groaned and the crowd all laughed. A negro 
boy asked me if my old man was ever on a horse 
before, and when I told him that dad had eaten 
horses in the army, the boy said that horse would 
eat him, ’cause he was a bucker from Buckers- 


422 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

ville, in the western part of the state. I told dad 
the horse was a dangerous bucker, but he tipped 
his hat on one side and said he had broken more 
bucking bronchos than those Texas livery men 
ever saw. Dad borrowed a pair of these Mexi- 



“Dad began to pose as a regular old Rough Rider ” 

can spurs with a wheel in them as big as a silver 
dollar, and the men held the horse by the bridle 
while dad got on, and I must say he got on like 
he knew how. He asked which was the road to 
Houston, and we started out of town. 

4 23 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


“Well, sir, I have been in a good many run- 
aways, and I was filling a soda fountain once 
when it exploded, and I have been on a toboggan 
when it run into a cow, and I have been to a 
church sociable when a boy turned some rats 
loose, and a terrier went after them right among 
the women, but I never was so paralyzed as I 
was to see dad and that horse try to stay to- 
gether. The first two miles out of town the horse 
walked, and acted as though it was going to die, 
and my pony would get away ahead and have to 
wait for dad and the camel to come up. Dad 
was mad because they gave him such a slow 
horse. 

“ 'What are those things on your heels for ?’ 
I says to dad. 'Why don’t you run the spokes 
into his slats?’ I said, just to be sociable. 

'' 'Never you mind me,’ says dad. 'After I 
have looked at the scenery a while I will open 
the throttle on this dromedary, and we will go 
and visit the Pyramids.’ 

“I was a little ahead and I did not catch dad 
in the act of kicking open the throttle, but I 
heard something that sounded like a freight train 
wreck, and dad and the horse went by me like 
a horse race, only that the horse was not on the 
ground half the time, and he didn’t go straight 


424 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

ahead, but just lowered his head between his 
legs and jumped in the air and came down stiff- 
legged and then jumped sideways, and changed 
ends and did it all over again, all over the prairie, 
and dad was a sight. His eyes stuck out, and 
his teeth rattled, and every time the horse came 
down on his feet dad seemed to get shorter, as 
though his spine was being telescoped up into his 
hat. I think dad would have fallen off the first 
jump, only he had rammed the spurs in amongst 
the horse’s ribs, and couldn’t get them out. Gee, 
but you never saw such actions, unless you have 
seen a horse go plum crazy. The horse kept 
giving dad new fancy side steps, and jumps until 
dad yelled to me to get a gun and shoot him or 
the horse, and he didn’t care which. I yelled to 
dad to loosen up on the bridle, and let the horse 
run lengthways instead of sideways, and I guess 
he did, for the horse lit out for some musquite 
trees and before I could get there the horse had 
run under a limb and scraped dad off, and when 
I got there dad was lying under a tree, trying to 
pray and swear all to wonst, and his spurs were 
all blood and hair, and things a horse wears on 
the inside of hisself, and the horse was standing 
not far away, eating grass, and looking at dad. 
If dad had had his revolver along he would have 

425 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

killed the horse, but the horse seemed to know he 
had been fooling with an unarmed man. I got 
dad righted up, and he rode my pony to town, 
and I had to lead the bucking horse, and he eat 
some of the cloth out of my pants. 



“Say, this is a bully place down here; just as 
quiet and sunshiny as can be, only dad is in a hos- 
pital for a week or so, having operations on 
where the horse let him drop once in a while on 
the saddle, and the livery man made dad buy the 

426 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

horse ’cause he said dad had ripped his sides out 
with the spurs. Dad says we will have a picnic 
when he gets out of the hospital. He is going to 
buy some dynamite and take the horse out on 
the prairie and blow him up. Dad is so fond of 
dumb animals. I got your letter about your being 
in love. Gee, but you ( an’t afford it on your sal- 
ary. 

“Your* quite truly, 

“Hennery.” 


427 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XXXV. 

The Bad Boy and his Dad Return from Texas — The 
Boy Tells the Groceryman about the Excite- 
ment at San Antonio. 

The old groceryman sat on an up-turned half 
bushel measure in front of the store drying his 
old-fashioned boots. As he fried the soles in 
front of the red hot stove, there was an odor of 
burnt leather, but he did not notice it, as the other 
odors natural to the dirty old grocery seemed to 
be in the majority. The door opened quietly, and 
the old man got up to wait on a possible custo- 
mer, when the bad boy rushed in and dropped on 
the floor the queerest animal the old man and the 
cat had ever seen. The cat got up on the counter 
on a pile of brown wrapping paper, curved its 
back and purmeyowed, and the strange animal 
jumped into a half barrel of dried apples and be- 
gan to dig with all four feet, as though to make 
a bed to lie in. 

“Take that animalcule, or whatever it is, out 
of them apples,” said the old groceryman, pick- 
ing up a fire-poker. “What is it, and where 

428 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


did it come from, and when did you get back, and 
how is your pa, and why didn't you stay away, 
and what do you want here anyway?" and the 
old man eyed the animal and the bad boy, ex- 
pecting to be bitten by one and bilked by the 
other. 

“That's a prairie dog from Texas, if you are 
not posted in ornicothology," said the boy, as he 
took the prairie dog up and put him on the coun- 
ter near the cat. “Dad is all right, only we were 
driven out of Texas by the board of health." 

“ I told that pirate chum of yours when he read 
me your letter, that you would last in Texas just 
about a week, and that you would be shipped 
home in a box. They are not as tolerant with 
public nuisances down south as we are here. But 
what did you do there to get the board of health 
after you?" and the old man pushed the cat's back 
down level, and held her tail so she couldn't eat 
the prairie dog. 

“Well, sir, it was the condemdedest outrage 
that ever was," said the boy, as he gave the prairie 
dog some crackers and cheese. “You see, dad 
told me I could pick up some pet animals while I 
was in Texas, and I got quite a collection while 
dad was in the hospital. Here is one in my 
pocket," and the boy took a horned toad out of 

429 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


his pocket, about as big as a soft-shelled crab, 
and put it in the old groceryman’s hand. 

“Condemn you, don’t you put a poisonous rep- 
tile in my hand,” said the old man, as he dropped 
the ugly-looking toad on the floor, and got be- 



hind the show case, while the boy laughed fit to 
kill. “Now tell your story and vamose, by 
ginger, or I will ring for the patrol wagon. You 
would murder a man in his own house, and laugh 
at his spasms.” 


430 


PECICS BAD BOY ABROAD 


“O, get out, that toad and this prairie dog are 
as harmless as your old cat there/' said the boy, 
as he watched the old man tremble as though he 
had jim-jams. “I have got a tarantula and a 
diamond-back rattlesnake that will pizen you, 
though. I’ll tell you about our getting fired out 
of Texas, if you will stand still a minute. You 
see, I had my collection of pets in my room at 
the hotel, and I had the bell boys bribed, and the 
chambermaid would only come in our room while 
I was there to watch the pets. The night dad 
got back from the hospital, where he went to 
grow some new bones and things on his insides, 
after he rode the bucking broncho, a man got me 
the prettiest little animal you ever saw, sort of 
white and black, about the size of a cat, and I 
took it to the room and put it under the bed in a 
box the man gave me. Dad had gone to bed, 
and was snoring so you could cut it with a knife.” 

“Say, you knew that animal was a skunk all 
the time, now tell me, didn’t you,” said the old 
groceryman. “You was a fool to take it, when 
you knew what a skunk will do.” 

“Yes, I thought it was a skunk, all right,” 
said the boy, “but the man told me the animal 
had been vaccinated, and wouldn’t ever make 
any -trouble for any one, and he would warrant it. 

43i 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

I thought a warranted skunk was all right, and 
so I went to bed in a cot next to dad’s bed. I 
guess it was about daylight when skunks want 
to suck eggs, that he began to scratch the box, 
and squeak, and I was afraid it would wake dad 



“Dad heard something at night and rose up in bed” 

up, so I reached down and took off the cover of 
the box. From that very identical moment the 
trouble began. Dad heard something in the room 
and he rose up in bed and the animal sat on the 
foot of the bed and looked at dad. Dad said 


43 2 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


'scat/ and threw a pillow at my pet, and then all 
was chaos. I never exactly smelled chaos, but 
I know it when I smell it. O, O, but you’d a dide 
to see dad. He turned blue and green, and said 
'Hennery, someone has opened a jack pot, call 
for the police F I rushed for the indicator where 
you ring for bell boys, and cocktails, and things, 
and touched all the buttons, and then got in bed 
and pulled a quilt over my head, and dad went 
into a closet where my snakes and things were, 
and the vaccinated skunk kept on doing the same 
as he did to dad, and I thought I should die: 
Dad heard my snake rattle hisself in the box, and 
he stepped on my prairie dog and yelled murder, 
and he got into my box of horned toads, and my 
young badger scratched dad’s bare feet, and a 
young eagle I had began to screech, and dad 
began to have a fit. He said the air seemed 
fixed, and he opened the window, and sat on the 
window sill in his night shirt, and a fireman 
came up a ladder from the outside and turned 
the hose on dad, then the police came and broke 
in the door, and the landlord was along, and the 
porter, and all the chambermaids, and every- 
body. I had turned in all the alarms there were, 
and everybody came quick. The skunk met the 
policemen halfway, and saluted them as polite 


433 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

as could be, and they fell back for reinforce- 
ments; dad got into his pants and yelled that he 
was stabbed, and I don’t know what didn’t hap- 
pen. Finally the policemen got my skunk under 
a blanket and walked on him, and he was 



“Dad stepped on my prairie dog and yelled murder.” 

squashed, but, by gosh, they can never use that 
blanket again, and I told ’em so.” 

“It’s a wonder they didn’t put a blanket over 
you, and kill you too,” said the old grocery man, 
as he moved away from the horned toad, which 
the boy had placed on the counter. “What did 


434 


PECK'S BAD BOY ABROAD 

they do to you then? What way did your dad 
explain it? How long did you remain at the 
hotel after that?” 

“We didn't stay hardly any after that,” said 
the boy, as he pushed the prairie dog along the 
counter toward the groceryman’s cat, hoping to 
get them to fighting. “The landlord said we dam 
yankee's were too strenuous for his climate, and 
if we didn't get out of the house in fifteen min- 
utes he would get a gun and see about it, and 
he left two policemen to see that we got away. 
Dad tried to argue the question with the land- 
lord, after all the windows had been opened in 
the house. He said he had come to Texas for a 
quiet life, to get away from the climate of the 
north, but he had no idea any landlord would 
turn animals into a gentleman's room, and he 
would sue for damages; but the bluff did not 
work, and we left San Antonio on a freight train, 
under escort of the police, and the board of 
health. Say, that freight train smelled like it 
had a hot box, but nobody suspected us. When 
we got most to New Orleans dad said, 'Hennery, 
I hope this will be a lesson to you,' and I told 
him two more such lessons would kill his little 
boy dead.” 

“What did you do with your clothes?” said 

435 


PECK'S BAD BOY ABROAD 


the groceryman, as he snuffed around, as though 
he thought he could smell something. 

“O, we bought new clothes in New Orleans, 
and let our old ones out of the window of a 
hotel with a rope. A man picked them up, and 



they sent him to the quarantine for smallpox 
patients. O, we came out all right, but it was 
a close call. Say, I bet this prairie dog can lick 
your cat in a holy minute,” and the boy pushed 
the dog against the cat, said “sik em,” and the cat 

436 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


scratched the dog, the dog yelled and bit the cat, 
the cat run up the shelves, over the canned goods, 
and tipped over some bottles of pickles, and the 
old groceryman got' crazy, while the boy took 
his prairie dog under his arm, and his horned 
toad in his hand and started to go out. 

‘Til drop in some day and have some fun with 
you,” says the boy. 

“If you do I will stab you with a cheese knife,” 
said the groceryman as he picked up the broken 
glass. 


437 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XXXV I. 

The Bad Boy’s Joke with a Stuffed Rattlesnake — He 
Tells the Old Groceryman about his Dad’s 
Morbid Appetite. 

The old groceryman was sitting on the coun- 
ter, with his legs stretched lengthwise, his heels 
resting on a sack of flour, and his back against a 
pile of wrapping paper, his eyes closed, his pipe 
gone out, and the ashes sifting from it on the 
cat that was asleep in his lap. He was waiting 
for a customer to come in and buy something to 
start the day’s business. He had sprinkled the 
floor and swept the dirt up in a corner, and he 
was sleepy. There was a crash in front of the 
door, a barrel of axe handles and garden tools 
had been tipped over on the sidewalk, the door 
opened with, a jerk and closed with a slam, and 
the bad boy came in with a long paper box, per- 
forated with holes, slammed it on the counter be- 
side the groceryman’s legs, and yelled: 

“Wake up, Rip Van Winkle, the day of judg- 
ment has come, and you are still buried. You 
got to get a move on -you or the procession will 

438 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


go off and leave you. Say, are you afraid of 
rattlesnakes ?” and the bad boy shook the paper 

box, when an enormous rattle came from within, 
as though a snake had shaken its tail good and 
plenty. 

“Great Scott, boy, I believe you have got a 
rattlesnake in that box,” and he jumped off the 
counter and grabbed an iron fire poker, while the 
boy got out his knife to cut the string on the box. 
“Now, lookahere, I am suffering from nervous 
prostration, and a snake turned loose in this store 
would settle it with me. I am at your mercy, but 
by the holy smoke, if I am bitten by that snake 
I will kill you and your old snake. Now take that 
box out of here,” and the old man picked up a 
hatchet and got behind a barrel. 

“Well, wouldn’t that skin you,” said the bad 

boy, as he sharpened his knife on a piece of old 
cheese, and felt of the edge. “Here you have 
been telling me for years what a brave man you 
were, and how you were not afraid of anything 
that wore hair, and now you have fits be- 
cause a little five-foot rattlesnake, with only ten 
rattles on, makes a formal call on you. Gee, but 
you are a squaw. Why, there is no danger in the 
bite of a rattlesnake, since science has taken the 
matter up. All you got to do, when a snake bites 


439 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

you and you begin to turn black, is to drink a 
couple of quarts of whisky, and. bind a poultice of 
limberg cheese on the wound, and go to bed for a 
week or ten days, and you come out all right,” and 
the bad boy began to cut the string. 

“Now, let up until I wait on these customers,” 
said the old man, as he went to the door and let 
in a committee of women who were to buy some 
supplies for a church sociable. The women lined 
up on each side of the store, looking at the canned 
things on the shelves, and the old man was try- 
ing to be polite, when the bad boy opened the box 
and laid on the floor a stuffed rattlesnake that 
was as natural as life, and touched a rattle box in 
his pocket, and the trouble began. The women 
saw the snake curled up, ready to spring, and 
they all went through the door at once, tipping 
over everything that was loose, and screaming, 
while the old man, when he saw the snake, got 
into the front show window and trembled and 
yelled for the police. A policeman rushed in the 
store and when he saw the snake he backed out 
of the door, and the bad boy sat down on a box 
and began to eat some raisins out of a box, as 
though he was not particularly interested in the 
commotion. 


440 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

“Arrest that boy with the snake/’ said the gro- 
ceryman. 

“Come out of that wid your menagerie,” said 
the policeman, shaking his club. 

“Come in and get the snake if you want it,” 
said the boy. “I don’t want it any more, any- 
way,” and he took the stuffed snake up by the 
head and laid it across his lap, and began to shake 
the rattles, and laugh at the groceryman and the 
policeman, and the crowd that had collected in 
front of the store. The policeman came in laugh- 
ing, and the old groceryman crawled out of the 
show window, and all breathed free again, and 
finally the policeman went and drove the crowd 
away, and went on his beat again, after shaking 
his club at the boy; the groceryman, the snake 
and the cat remained in the store. The grocery- 
man took a swig out of a bottle of whisky, to set- 
tle his nerves, and the boy took up his snake and 
pushed it towards the cat, which ran up a step- 
ladder and yowled. 

“Do you know, I kind of like you,” said the 
old groceryman, as he went up behind the bad 
boy and took him by the throat, “and I think it 
would be a great thing for the community if I 
should just choke you to death. You are worse 


441 


\ 






PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

than a mad dog, and you are just ruining my 
business.” 

“I will give you just ten seconds to take your 
hand of? my neck,” said the bad boy, pulling out 
a dollar watch, “and when the time is up, and you 
have not let loose of me, I will turn loose a couple 
of live snakes I have in my pocket, and some 
tartantulas, and you will probably be bitten and 
swell up like a poisoned pup, and die under the 
counter.” 

“All right, let’s be friends,” said the old man, 
as he let go of the bad boy. “If your parents and 
the rest of the community can stand having you 
around, alive, probably it is my duty to be a mar- 
tyr, and stand my share, but you are very try- 
ing to the nerves. By the way, put that con- 
founded stuffed snake in the ice box, and sit 
down here and tell me something. I saw your 
father on the street yesterday, and he is a sight. 
His stomach is twice as big around as it was, and 
he looks troubled. What has got into him?” 

“Well, I’ll tell you, dad has got what they call 
a morbid appetite. Whatever you do, old skate, 
don’t you ever get a morbid appetite.” 

“What is a morbid appetite?” asked the old 
man, as he peeled a banana and began to eat it. “I 


443 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

can always eat anything that is not tied down, but 
I don't know about this morbid business.” 

“Scientists say a morbid appetite is one that 
don't know when it has got enough. Dad likes 
good things, but he wants all there is on the 
table. Now, at New Orleans, before we came 
home, dad and I went in a restaurant to get some 
oysters, and you know the oysters there are the 
biggest in the world. When we got there dad was 
hungry, and the thought of raw oysters on the 
half shell made him morbid. He had a blue point 
appetite, and ordered four dozen on the half shell, 
for himself, and one dozen for me. Well, you 
would have dropped dead in your tracks if you 
had been there. Six waiters brought on the five 
dozen oysters, and each oyster was as big as a 
pie plate. Six dozen oysters would cover this 
floor from the door to the ice box. Dad almost 
fainted when he saw them, but his pride was at 
stake, and he made up his mind if he didn't eat 
them all the waiters would think he was a tender- 
foot, and so he started in. The first oyster was 
as big as a calf's liver, and nobody but a sword 
swallower could ever have got it down. Dad cut 
one oyster into quarters, and got away with it, 
and after a while he murdered another, and after 
he had eaten three he wanted to go home and 


444 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


leave them. Then is the time his little boy got in 
his work. I told dad that if he didn’t eat all the 
oysters the waiters and the people would mob him, 
that it was a deadly offense to order oysters and 
not eat them, and that they would probably kill 



r Each oyster was as big as a pie plate.’ 


us both before we got out of the place. He said, 
‘Hennery, I don’t like oysters like I used to, and 
it seems to me I couldn’t eat another one to save 
my life, but if, as you say, we are in a country 

445 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

where a man's life is held so cheaply, by the great 
horn spoons, I will eat every oyster in the house, 
and the Lord have mercy on me.' I told him 
that was about the size of it, and he would eat or 
die, and maybe he would die anyway, and just 
then a wicked-looking negro with a big oyster 
knife came to the table and looked ugly at dad 
and said, 'Have another dozen?' and dad said, 
'Yes,' and then he began to eat as though his life 
depended on it, and I could hear the great wads 
of oysters strike with a dull thud on exposed 
places inside of dad, and before he got up from 
the table he had eaten them all, and he told the 
man we would be in again to lunch after awhile. 
Dad is the bravest man I ever saw, and don't you 
forget it. He would have come out all right, I sup- 
pose, and lived, if it hadn't been for his devilish 
morbid appetite for travel and adventure. Quick 
as we got out of the oyster place dad wanted to 
take a steamboat ride down the river to the Eades 
Jetties at the mouth of the river, and we went on 
board, and had a nice ride down to the mouth. 
After we had looked over the jetties where Eades 
made an artificial canal big enough for the largest 
ocean steamers to come up to New Orleans, the 
passengers wanted the captain to run the boat 
outside the bar, into the blue ocean, where the 

446 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

waves come from. Gee, but I hope I may live 
long enough to forget the ride. We hadn’t got a 
boat’s length outside the bar before the boat be- 
gan to roll and toss, and I held on to dad’s hand, 
and wished I was dead. I told him my little 
tummy ached, and I wanted a lemon. Dad said 
my little tummy, with its three oysters in it, was 
not worth mentioning, and told me to look at 
him. Talk about your Mount Pelee, and your 
Vesuvius, those volcanoes were tame and unin- 
teresting, compared to dad, leaning over the rail- 
ing, and shouting words at the sharks in the water. 
Why, he just doubled up like a jack knife, one 
minute, and then straightened up like an elephant 
standing on its hind legs in a circus, the next 
minute, and he kept saying, ‘Ye-up/ and all 
the passengers said 'poor man/ I told them he 
was not so poor, for he owned a brewery at home. 
Dad finally went to sleep with his arm and head 
over the rail, and his body hanging limp down on 
deck. The boat turned around and went back into 
the mouth of the river, and the passengers were 
thanking the captain for giving them such a 
lovely ride, when I thought I would wake dad 
up, and so I touched him on the shoulder and 
asked him if he didn’t want a few dozen more 
raw oysters, and he yelled murder, and began to 

447 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

have hydrophobia again, and hump himself. You 
know the way people do when they are dissatis- 
fied with the medicine the doctor gives. Well, 
we got back to New Orleans, and dad took a 
hack to the hotel, and told the driver not to pass 
any saloon where there were oyster shells on the 
sidewalk. We came home next day. Well, I 
guess I will get my snake out of the ice box, and 
go home and comfort dad. But wait a minute 
till that Irishman puts that chunk of ice in the 
ice box, and see if he notices the snake.” Just 
then there was a sound as if a house had fallen, 
a two hundred pound cake of ice struck the floor, 
and the Irishman came running through the gro- 
cery with his ice tongs waving, and yelling, 
“There’s a rattlesnake in yer ice box, mister, and 
ye can go to h — 1 for yer ice.” The groceryman 
looked at the boy, the boy looked at the grocery- 
man, the cat looked at both, the boy took his 
snake under his arm and went out, and the old 
man said, 

“Well, you are the limit. Call again, and bring 
an anaconda, and a man-eating tiger,” and he 
went and scraped up the ice. 


448 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 

The Bad Boy Tells the Story of the Bears in Yellow- 
stone Park and how Brave Dad was. 

The old groceryman was down on his knees, 
with a wet cloth, swabbing up something from 
the floor with one hand, while he held his nose 
with the other, his back toward the door, when 
suddenly the door opened with a bang, striking 
the old man in the back, knocking him over and 
landing him with his head in a basket of strictly 
fresh eggs, breaking at least a dozen of them, 
and filling the air with an odor that was unmis- 
takable; and the bad boy followed the door into 
the grocery. 

“What’s your notion of taking a nap, with a 
basket of stale eggs for a pillow,” said the bad 
boy, as he took the old man by the arm and raised 
him up, and looked at him with a grin that was 
tantalizing. “What is it, sewer gas? My, but 
the board of health won’t do a thing to you if 
the inspector happens in here. Those eggs must 
have been mislaid by a hen that had a diseased 
mind,” and the bad boy took a bottle of cologne 

449 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

out of the show case and began to sprinkle the 
floor, and squirted some of it on the old man's 
clothes. 

“Say, do you know I bought those eggs of a 
man dressed like a farmer, who came in here 
yesterday with his pants in his boots, and smell- 
ing as though he had just come out of his cow 
stable?" said the old groceryman, as he took a 
piece of coffee sack and wiped yellow egg off his 
whiskers. “And yet they are old enough to at- 
tend caucuses, I tell you that you have got to 
watch a farmer the same as you do a crook, or 
he will get the best of you. And to think I sold 
four dozen of those eggs to a church sociable 
committee that is going to make ice cream for a 
celebration to-night. But what in thunder do 
you come in here for, like a toboggin, and knock 
me all over the floor, into eggs, when you could 
come in gently and save a fellow's life; and me 
a sick man, too. Ever since that explosion, when 
we tried to see how they blow up battleships, I 
have had nervous prostration, and I am just 
about sick of this condemned foolishness. I like 
to keep posted on current events, and want to 
learn how things are going on outside in the 
world, and I realize that for an old man to asso- 
ciate with a bright boy like you keeps him young, 

450 




PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


but, by ginger, when I think how you have done 
me up several times, I sometimes think I better 
pick out a boy that is not so strenuous, so you 
can tell your pa I rather he wouldn’t trade here 
any more, and for him to keep you away from 
here. It is hard on me, I know, but life is dear 
to all of us, and the life insurance company that 
I am contributing to has notified me that if I don’t 
quit having you around they will cancel my policy. 
Now, you may say farewell, and get out of here 
forever, and I will try and pull along with the cat, 
and such boys as come in here to be sociable. Go 
on now,” and the old groceryman threw the 
eggs out in the alley, and washed his whiskers at 
the sink. 

“Oh, I guess not,” said the boy, as he sat down 
on a tin cracker box and began to eat figs out 
of a box. “I know something about the law my- 
self, and if you drive me away, you could be ar- 
rested for breach of promise, and arson, and you 
would go to the penitentiary. It was all I could 
do to make the police believe you didn’t set this 
old shebang afire to get the insurance, and my 
being here has drawn more custom to your store 
than the quality of your goods would warrant. 
No, sir, I stay right here, and advise with you, 
and keep you out of trouble. If I went home and 

452 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


told dad what you said he would fall in a fit, and 
would sue you for damages for ruining my repu- 
tation, if he didn’t come over here with a club 
and take it out of your hide. Dad can stand a 
good many things, but when anybody insults one 
of our family, dad gets violent, and he had rather 
kill a man than eat. You read about their find- 
ing the body of a man in an alley, with his head 
crushed? Well, I don’t want to say anything, but 
it is rumored that dad was seen near that alley 
the night before, and that man chased me once 
for throwing snow balls at him. We move in 
good society, and are looked upon as good citi- 
zens, but dad’s temper gets worse every year. 
Can I stay around here more or less, or do I have 
to go out into the world, branded as a criminal, 
because an old fool fell into a basket of his own 
eggs? Say, now, answer up quick,” and the bad 
boy sharpened a match with a big dirk knife and 
picked fig seeds out of his teeth. 

“Oh, sugar, no; you don’t need to go,” said the 
old groceryman, as he came up to the boy, wip- 
ing the soapsuds off, and trying to smile. “I was 
only joshing you, and, honestly, I enjoy you. 
Life is a dreary burden when you are away. 
Somehow I have got so my blood gets thick, and 
lily appetite fails, when you are away from town, 

453 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

and when you play some low down trick on me, 
while I seem mad at the time, it does me good, 
starts the circulation, and when you go away I 
seem a new man, and laugh, and feel like I had 
been off on a vacation, fishing, or something. It 
was a great mistake that I did not have a family 
of boys to keep me mad part of the time, because 
a man that never has anything to make him mad 
is no good. I envy your dad in having you 
around constantly to keep his blood in circulation. 
I suppose you are responsible for his being, at 
his age, as spry as a boy. He told me when he 
and you got back from Yellowstone park last 
summer that the trip did him a world of good, 
and that he got so he could climb a tree — just 
shin right up like a cat, and that you were the 
bravest boy he ever saw, said that you would fight 
a bear as quick as eat. Such a boy I am proud 
to call my friend. What was it about your fight- 
ing bears, single-handed, with no weapon but 
empty tomato cans? You ought to be in the his- 
tory books. Your dad said bravery run in the 
family.” 

“Oh, get out. Did dad tell you about that bear 
story?” said the bad boy, as he sharpened his 
knife on his boot. “Well, you’d a dide right there, 
if you could have seen dad. He is one of these 

454 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


men that is brave sort of intermittent, like folks 
have fever. Half the time he is a darn coward, 
but when you don't expect it, for instance when 
the pancakes are burned, or the steak is raw, and 
his dyspepsia seems to work just right, he will 
flare up and sass the cook, and I don't know of 
anything braver than that; but ordinarily he is 



“You ought to have seen dad's short legs carry him to a tree ” 

meek as a lam. I think the stomach has a good 
deal 'to do with a man's bravery. You take a 
soldier in battle, and if he is hungry he is full of 
fight, but you fill him up with baked beans and 
things and he is willing to postpone a fight, and 
he don't care whether there is any light at all 
or not. I think the trip through Yellowstone 

455 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


park took the tar out of dad. Those geysers 
throwing up hot water, apparently right out of 
the hot place the preachers tell about, seemed 
to set him to thinking that may be he had got 
nearer h — 1, on a railroad pass, than he had ever 
expected to get. He told me, one day, when we 
stood beside old Faithful geyser, and the hot wa- 
ter belched up into the air a hundred feet, that all 
it wanted was for the lid to be taken off, and 
h — 1 would be yawning right there, and he was 
going to try to lead a different life, and if he ever 
got out of that park alive he should go home, 
and join every church in town, and he should ad- 
vise ministers to get the sinners to take a trip to 
the park, if they wanted to work religion into 
them. Dad would wake up in the night, at the 
hotels in the park, when a geyser went off sud- 
denly, and .groan, and cross himself, as he had 
seen religious people do, and tell me that in a few 
days more we would be safe out of the d — n 
place, and you would never catch him in it again. 

“Well, there is one hotel where a lot of bears 
come out of the woods in the evening, to eat the 
garbage that is thrown out from the hotel. They 
are wild bears, all right, but they have got so 
tame that they come right near folks, and don't 
do anything but eat garbage and growl, and fight 

45 6 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


each other. The cook told me about it, and said 
there was no danger, 'cause you could take a club 
and scare them into the woods. 

“We got to the hotel in the afternoon, and dad 
went to our room to say his prayers, and take .a 
nap, and had his supper taken to the room, and 
he was so scared at the awful surroundings in 
the park that he asked a blessing on the supper; 
though it was the bummest supper I ever struck. 
After dark I told dad we better go out and take 
a walk and inspect the scenery, 'cause it was all 
in the bill, and if you got a bum supper and didn't 
get the scenery you were losing money on the 
deal. I sacw the man empyting the garbage and 
I knew the bears would be getting in their work 
pretty soon, so I took dad and we walked away 
off, and he talked about how God had prepared 
that park as a warning to sinners of what was to 
come, and I knew his system was sort of run- 
ning down, and I knew he needed excitement, a 
shock or something to make a reaction, so I 
steered him around by the garbage pile. . 

“Say, before he knew it we were right in the 
midst of about nine bears, grizzlies, cinnamon 
bears, black bears, and all of them raised up and 
said, “Whoof!" and they growled, and, by gosh, 
just as quick as I could run this knife into your 

457 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


liver, I missed dad. He just yelled: “Hennery, 
this is the limit, and here is where your poor old 
dad sprints for tall timber,” and he made for a 
tree, and I yelled : ' “Hurry up, dad !” and he 
said: “I ain’t walking, am I?” and you ought 



"I studied the bears for awhile and let dad yell for the police/ 9 

to have seen his short legs carry him to the tree, 
and help him skin up it. I have seen squirrels 
climb trees, when a dog was after them, but they 
were slow compared to dad. When he got up to 
a limb he yelled to me to come on up, as he wanted 

458 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


to give me a few last instructions about settling 
his estate, but I told him I was going to play I 
was Daniel in the lion’s den, so I studied the bears 
for a while and let dad yell for the police, and 
then I picked up an armful of tomato cans and 
make a rush for the bears, and yelled and threw 
cans at them, and pretty soon every bear went 
off into the woods, growling and scrapping with 
each other, and I told dad to come down and I 
would save him at the risk of my life. Dad came 
down as quick as he went up, and I took his arm 
and led him to the hotel, and when we got to the 
room he would have collapsed, only I gave him a 
big drink of whiskey, and then he braced up and 
said: “Hennery, when it comes to big game, 
you and I are the wonders of the world. You 
are brave, and I am discreet, and we make a team 
hard to beat.” I told dad he covered himself with 
glory, but that he left most of his pants on the 
tree,” but he said he didn’t care for a few pants 
when he had a boy that was the bravest that ever 
came down the pike. When we got home alive 
he didn’t join the church, but he gave me a gold 
watch. Well, I’ll have to depart,” and the bad 
boy went out and left the old groceryman think- 
ing of the hereafter. 


459 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

The Bad Boy and the Groceryman Illustrate the 
Russia- Japanese War — The Bad Boy Tells 
about Dad’s Efforts to raise Hair by 
the “Sunshine” Method. 

The old groceryman had a war map spread 
out on the counter, and for an hour he had stood 
up m front of it, reading a morning paper, with 
his thumb on Port Arthur, his fingers covering 
the positions occupied by the Japanese and Rus- 
sian forces in Manchuria, and his face working 
worse than the face of the Czar eating a caviar 
sandwich and ordering troops to the far east, at 
the same time shying at dynamite bombs of nihil- 
ists. There was a crash in front of the grocery 
and the old man jumped behind a barrel, thinking 
Port Arthur had been blown up, and the Rus- 
sian fleet torpedoed. 

“Hello, Matsuma, you young monkey/' said 
the old man, as the bad boy burst the door open 
and rushed in with a shovel at shoulder arms, 
and came to “present arms" in front of the old 
man, who came from behind the barrel and 
acknowledged the salute. “Say, now honest did 
460 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

you put that chunk of ice in the stove the day 
you skipped out last?” 

“Sure Mike!” said the boy, as he ran the shovel 
under the cat that was sleeping by the stove, and 
tossed her into a barrel of dried apples. “I 
wanted to demonstrate to you, old Michaelovit- 



Came to present arms. 


ski, the condition of things at Vladivostok, where 
you candle-eating Russians are bottled up in the 
ice, and where we Japanese are going to make 
you put on your skates and get away to Siberia. 
What are you doing with the map of the seat of 
war ?” 


461 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


“Oh, I was only trying to figure out the plan 
of campaign, and find out where the Japanese 
would go to when they are licked,” said the old 
man. “This thing is worrying me. I want to see 
Russia win, and I think our government ought to 
send to them all the embalmed beef we had left 
from the war with Spain, but if we did you 
monkey Japanese would capture it, and have a 
military funeral over it, and go on eating fish 
and rice. When this country was in trouble, in 
1864, the Russians sent a fleet of warships to New 
York and notified all Europe to stand back and 
look pleasant, and by the great horn spoons, I am 
going to stand by Russia or bust. I would like to 
be over there at Port Arthur and witness an ex- 
plosion of a torpedo under something. Egad, but 
I glory in the smell of gunpowder. Now, say, 
here is Port Arthur, by this barrel of dried ap- 
ples, and there is Mushapata, by the ax handle 
barrel, see?” 

“Well, you and I are just alike,” said the boy. 
“Let’s have a sham battle, right here in the gro- 
cery. Get down that can of powder.” 

“’Taint against the law, is it?” said the old 
man as he handed down a tin cannister of powder. 
“I want excitement, and valuable information, 
but I don’t want to unduly excite the neighbors.” 

462 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


“Oh, don’t worry about the neighbors,” said 
the boy, as he poured a little powder under the 
barrel of dried applies. “Now, as you say, this 
is Port Arthur. This chest of Oolong tea repre- 
sents a Japanese cruiser outside the harbor. This 
box of codfish represents a Russian fort, see? and 



the stove represents a Russian cruiser. This bar- 
rel of ax handles is the Russian army, entrenched 
behind the bag of coffee. Now, we put a little 
powder under all of them, and lay a train 
from one to the other, and now you get out 

463 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

a few of those giant firecrackers you had left over 
from last Fourth of July, and a Roman candle, 
and we can illustrate the whole business so Alex- 
ovitch and Ito would take to the woods.” 

“No danger, is there?” said the old grocery- 
man, as he brought out the fireworks, looking as 
happy and interested as the bad boy did. “I want 
to post myself on war in the far east, but I don’t 
want to do anything that would occasion re- 
mark.” 

“Oh, remark nothing,” said the boy, as he fixed 
a firecracker under a barrel of rice, another un- 
der a tin can of soda crackers, and got the Roman 
candle ready to touch off at the stove. “It will 
not make any more fuss than taking a flash-light 
photograph. Just a piff-s-s-sis — boom — and 
there you are, full of information.” 

“Well, let-er-go-Gallagher,” said the old man, 
sort of reckless like, as he got behind the cheese 
box. “Gol darn the expense, when you want to 
illustrate your ideas of war.” 

The boy lit the Roman candle, got behind a 
barrel of potatoes and turned the spluttering 
Roman candle on the giant firecracker under the 
stove, and when he saw the fuse of the firecracker 
was lighted, he turned the torch on the powder 
under the barrel of dried apples, and in a second 

464 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 

everything went kiting; the barrel of dried apples 
with the cat in it went up to the ceiling, the stove 
was blown over the counter, the cheese box and 
the old groceryman went with a crash to the back 
end of the store, the front windows blew out on 
the sidewalk, the store was full of smoke, the old 
man rushed out the back door with his whiskers 
singed and yelled “Fire!” while the bad boy fell 
out the front door with his eye winkers gone, 
and his hair singed, the cat got out with no hair 
to brag on, and before they could breathe twice 
the fire department came clattering up to a hy- 
drant and soon turned the hose inside the gro- 
cery. There was not very much fire, and after 
tipping over every barrel and box that had not 
been blown skyhigh the firemen gave one last 
look at the inside of the grocery, one last squirt 
at the burned and singed cat, that had crawled 
into a bag of cinnamon on the top shelf, and they 
went away, leaving the doors and windows open ; 
the crowd dispersed, and the bad boy went in the 
front door; peered around under the counter, 
pulled the cork out of a bottle of olive oil and be- 
gan to anoint himself where he had been scorched. 
Hearing a shuffling of arctic overshoes filled with 
water, in the back shed, and a still small voice, 
saying, “Well, Fll be condemned,” he looked up 

465 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


and saw the red face of the old groceryman peek- 
ing in the back door. 

“Come in, Alexandroviski, and rub some of 
this sweet oil on your countenance, and put some 
kerosene on your head, where the hair was. Gee ! 
but you are a sight ! Don’t you go out anywhere 
and let a horse see you, or he will run away.” 

“Have all the forts and war ships come down 
yet?” said the old man, looking up toward the 
ceiling, holding up his elbow to ward off any pos- 
sible descending barrel or stove lid. “I now real- 
ize the truth of Gen. Sherman’s remark that war 
is hell. Gosh! how it smarts where the skin is 
burnt off. Give me some of that salad oil,” and 
the old man sopped the oil on his face and head, 
and the boy rubbed his lips and ears, and they 
looked at each other and tried to smile two 
cracked, and wrinkled and scorched smiles, across 
the counter at each other. “Now, you little Jap- 
anese monkey, I hope you are satisfied, after ygu 
have wrecked my store, and fitted me fer the 
hospital, and I want you to get out of here, and 
never come back. By ginger, I^know when I 
have got enough war. They can settle that af- 
fair at Mukden, or Holoyahoo, or any old place. 
I wash my hands of the whole business. Git, you 
Spitz. What did yo x u pour so much powder 

466 


PECKS BAD BOY ABROAD 


around the floor for? All I wanted was a little 
innocent illustration of the horrors of war, not 
an explosion.” 

“That’s what I wanted, too,” said the boy, as 
he looked up on the top shelf at the cat, that was 
licking herself where the hair used to be. “How 
did I know that powder would burn so quick? Say, 
you are unreasonable. Do you think I will go 
off and leave you to die here under the counter 
of bloodpoisoning, like a dog that has eaten a 
loaded sausage ? Never ! I am going to nurse you 
through this thing, and bring you out as good 
as new. I know how you feel towards me. Dad 
felt the same way towards me, down in Florida, 
the time he got skun. You old people don’t seem 
to appreciate a boy that tries to teach you useful 
nollig.” 

“What about your dad getting skun in Flor- 
ida? I never heard about it,” said the old gro- 
ceryman, as he took a hand mirror and looked 
at his burned face. 

“Why, that was when we first got down there,” 
said the boy, looking at the old man and laugh- 
ing. “Gee! but you would make a boy laugh if 
his lips were chapped. You look like a greased 
pig at a barbecue. W ell, when we struck Florida, 
and dad got so he could assimilate high balls, and 

467 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


eat oranges off the trees, like a giraf, he said he 
wanted to go fishing, and get tanned up, so we 
hired a boat and I rowed while dad fished. I ast 
him why he didn’t try that new prescription to 
raise hair on his bald head that I read of in a 
magazine, to go bareheaded in the sun. He ast 
me if anybody ever raised any hair on a bald head 
that way, and I told him about Mr. Rockefeller, 
who had only one hair on his head, and he played 
golf bareheaded and in two weeks had to have 
his hair cut with a lawn mower, ’cause it made 
his brain ache. Dad said if Rockefeller could 
raise hair by the sunshine method he could, and 
he threw his straw hat overboard, and began to 
fish in the sun for fish and hair. Well, you’d a 
dide to see dad’s head after the blisters began 
to raise. First, he thought the blisters was hair, 
but when we got back to the hotel and he looked 
in a glass, he see it wasn’t hair worth a cent. His 
head and face looked like one of these hippopota- 
muses, and dad was mad. If I could have got 
dad in a side show I could have made a barrel of 
money, but he won’t never make a show of his- 
self, not even to make money, he is so proud. 
There is more proud flesh on dad than there is 
on any man I ever nursed. Well, dad ast me what 
was good for blisters, and I told him lime juice 

468 



Rockefeller could raise hair by the sunshine method , 
he could.” 


“Dad said if 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


was the best thing, so he sent me to get some 
limes. They are a little sour thing, like a lemon, 
and I told him to cut one in two and soak the 
juice on his head and face, and I went to supper, 
’cause dad looked so disreputable he wouldn’t go 
to the dining room. When I bought the limes the 
man gave me a green persimmon, and of course 
dad got. the persimmon instead of the lime, and 
when I came back to our room after supper dad 
was in bed, yelling for a doctor. Say, you know 
how a persimmon puckers your mouth up when 
you eat it? Well, dad had just sopped himself 
with persimmon juice, and his head was puckered 
up like the hide of an elephant, and his face and 
cheeks were drawn around sideways, and 
wrinkled so I was scart. I gave him a mirror to 
look at hisself, and when he got one look he said : 
'Hennery, it is all over with your dad, you might 
just as well call in a lawyer to take my measure 
for a will, and an undertaker to fill me with stuff 
so I will keep till they get me home by express, 
with handles on. What was that you called that 
fruit I sopped my head with?’ and he groaned 
like he was at a revival. Well, I told him he had 
used the persimmon instead of the lime juice I 
told him to, and that I would cure him, so I got 
a cake of dog soap and laundered dad, and put 

470 


PECK’S BAD BOY ABROAD 


on stuff to take the swelling out, and the next 
day he began to notice things, it would have been 
all right only a chambermaid told somebody the 
mean old man with the pretty boy in 471 had the 
smallpox, and that settled it. You know in a hotel 
they are offal sensitive about smallpox, ’cause all 
the boarders will leave if a man has a pimple on 
hisself, so they made dad and I go into quaran- 
tine in a hen house for a week, and dad saicl.it 
was all my fault trying to get him to raise hair 
like Rockefeller. Well, I must go home and ex- 
plain to ma how I lost my hair and eye-winkers. 
If I was in your place I would take a little tar and 
put it on where your hair was before the explo- 
sion,” and the bad boy went out, leaving the old 
groceryman drawing some tar out of the barrel, 
on to a piece of brown paper, and dabbling it on 
his head with his finger. 


END. 


471 



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